Part 21 (1/2)

”It's about Tom Slade, Mr Temple I know you don't like him and haven't much use for any of us scouts, and I was afraid if Mr

Ellsworth ca like that, but there couldn't be one with ue But there's another reason too; I stood for Toht him into the troop--and he's my friend and whatever is done for him _I_ want to do it I'll tell you what he did--you know, he's changed an awful lot since you knew hie so ed an awful lot You'd hardly believe what I' It was his own father, Mr Temple, that took Mary's pin--it wasn't Tom I'm dead sure of it, and I'll tell you how I know

[Illustration: ”SOMETIMES A FELLOW is AFRAID OF A GIRL”]

”I think he went out of the room where the rest of us were that day because he was afraid he ht see you--ashamed, you know--kind of I'd have felt the same way if I had thrown stones at you Well, he went around the house--I don't know just why he did that--but anyway, he found tracks there and he found a paint slar clilar got over Toot the pin froive it to Mary You know, soirl--”

John Tehtly

”And he was afraid of you, too, I suppose, and that's where he fell down, keeping the pin in his pocket I knoas his father because-here

I'll show you, Mr Temple Here's his membershi+p card in a union with his name on it, and this is what I think He stopped in the woods and tore this up so there wouldn't be anything on him to show his name and that was just when Tom found him Tom wouldn't tell about it because it's one of our laws that a scout ive this pin to Mary and then I want Too back with oing two years and--”

”Coe and your tracks,” said Mr Teo down in the car with me and I'll withdraw the complaint and do what I can to have the ht let ive it to Mary?”

”Yes, if she's about”

It was there in the spacious veranda that Roy handed Mary the pin and told her exactly what Tom had asked him to say

The chauffeur who saw Mr Teolf sticks, was a little puzzled He was stillinquiries about tracking After they had gone a few hundred yards he was ordered to stop and then he saw Roy run back to the house and return with two otten

If John Temple had had the least recollection of that scene in his own vacant lot in Bridgeboro, he ht have recalled the prophetic words of Mr Ellsworth, ”_by our fruits shall you know us, Mr Teotten that incident The tracking business, however, interested him; he was by no means convinced, but he was sufficiently persuaded to say the hich would free Toard to the golf sticks aeneral behaviour pleased him more than he allowed Roy to know

He had no particular interest in the scouts, but away down in the heart of John Te which he could not procure with his check-book, and that was a son A son like Roy would not be half bad He rather liked the way the boy had sat on the coping and swung his legs

CHAPTER XV

LEMONADE AND OLIVES

It fell out that on one of those fair August days there caeboro a picnic party of people ere forced to take their nature by the day, and following in the wake of these, as the peanutuard of all such festive rations,--Slats Corbett, the ”Two aces” (Ji), two of the three O'Connor boys (the other one had mumps), and, yea, even Sweet Caporal hieboro was upon their clothes, the dust of it was in the corners of their unwashed eyes They wore no badges but if they had these should have shown a leaden goat superiestive were they of street corners and vacant lots and ash heaps

It was a singular freak of fate that the destiny of the carefullynurtured Connover Bennett should have been involved with this gallant crew

The picnic was conducted according to the time-honored formula of such festivities There were lemonade and cold coffee in milk bottles; there were sandwiches in shoe boxes; there were hard-boiled eggs with acco salt in little twists of brown paper; there were olives and hat-pins to extract them with, and there were caround”

The rear-guard did not participate in the suht, and their investigations of the wooded neighborhood had not gone very far when they s is dear to the heart of a city boy, and that was a boat

It was pulled up along the river bank near the picnic grounds, and as a ed to the scouts It was used by the the river to e, instead of following the shore to a point opposite the tohere there was a bridge