Part 25 (1/2)

and so forth, and so forth:

ONE OF OUR OWN BOYS FROM CAMP DIX, PRIVATE ROSCOE BENT, WILL TELL OF SOLDIER LIFE.

COME AND GIVE HIM A WELCOME

There was more, but that was all Roscoe saw. It sickened him to read it.

He went on, heavy hearted, trying to comfort himself with the reflection that he really did not know where Tom was or what he was doing. But it did not afford him much comfort.

As he walked along, his head down, certain phrases ran continually through his mind. They came out of the past, like things dead, out of another life which Roscoe Bent knew no more: _Do you think I'd let them get you? Do you think because you made fun of me ... I wouldn't be a friend to you? I got the strength to strangle you! I know the trail--I'm a scout--and I got here first. They'd have to kill me to make me tell...._

Roscoe Bent looked behind him, as if he expected to see some one there.

But there was nothing but the straight, long street, in narrowing perspective.

Under a lamp post on the next corner he took out of his alligator-skin wallet a folded paper, very much worn on the creases, and holding it so that the light caught it he skimmed hurriedly the few half-legible sentences:

”... glad you didn't tell. If you had told it would have spoiled it all--so I'm going to help the government in a way I can do without lying to anybody.... can see I'm not the kind that tells lies. The thing ... most glad about ... that you got registered.

... like you and I always did, even when you made fun of me.”

”_I_ made fun----” he mumbled, crumpling the letter and sticking it into the capacious pocket of Uncle Sam's big coat. ”_I_--Christopher! If I only had your nerve now--Tommy. It doesn't--it doesn't count for so much to be able to strangle a fellow--though I ought to be strangled.--It's just like Margaret said--the other kind of strength. If I could only make up my mind to do a thing, like he could, and _then do it_!”

He leaned against the lamp post, this fine young soldier who was going to help ”can the Kaiser,” and he did not stand erect at all, and all his fine air was gone from him.

You had better not slink and slouch like that on the platform to-morrow night, Private Roscoe Bent.

”I can see myself giving my father that message! Proud of me--of _me!

Brave soldier!_ That's what this poor kid said. And me trying to flim-flam myself into thinking that I've got to keep still because I promised Tom. How is it any of his business? It's between me and my---- And I made fun of him--_him_! I wonder what this bully scout kid would say to that! I'm--I'm a low-down, contemptible sneak--that's what----”

On a sudden impulse, the same fine impulse which would some day carry him ahead of his comrades, straight across the German trenches, he ran to the corner where he had parted with Roy and looked eagerly up one street and down another. He ran to the next corner and looked anxiously down the street which crossed there. He ran a block up this street and looked as far as he could see along Terrace Place which was the way up to the fine old Blakeley homestead on the hill.

But no sign of Roy was there to be seen, for the good and sufficient reason that when Roy Blakeley, ”Silver Fox,” took it into his head to go scout pace, he was presently invisible to pursuers.

So Roscoe's impulse pa.s.sed, as Roscoe's impulses were very apt to do, and he wandered homeward, telling himself that fate had been against him and balked his n.o.ble resolution.

As he went down through Rockwood Place he saw the lights in the library, which told him that his mother and father were still up. But he did not deliver Mr. Ellsworth's message; he was strong enough for that, anyway.

Instead, he went straight up to his own room, which he had not occupied lately, and when he got up there he found that he was not alone. For a certain face haunted him all night and would not go away--a face with a heavy shock of hair, with a big, rugged mouth, and a b.l.o.o.d.y cut on its forehead.

CHAPTER XXV

THE FACE

All the next day that face haunted Roscoe. ”If I could only know where he is,” he said to himself; ”if I could bring him back, I'd tell the whole business.”

It occurred to him that perhaps Tom was dead and that that was why he was continually seeing that stolid face with the b.l.o.o.d.y scar. ”Maybe the cut got worse and he got blood poisoning and died,” he thought.

This train of thought possessed him so that he grew to believe that Tom Slade must really be dead. And that being the case, there would be no use in telling anybody anything....

At breakfast he seemed so preoccupied that after he left the room his mother said to his father,