Tom Slade with the Colors | Page 5

promised to do his duty to God and Country and to obey the Scout
Law.
The fact was that Tom was clumsy and rough--perhaps a little
uncouth--and he could do big things but not little things.
As he ambled along the dark street, nursing his disgruntled mood, he
came to Rockwood Place and turned into it, though it did not afford
him the shortest way home. But in his sullen mood one street was as
good as another, and Rockwood Place had that fascination for him
which wealth and luxury always had for poor Tom.
Three years before, when Tom Slade, hoodlum, had been deserted by
his wretched, drunken father and left a waif in Bridgeboro, Mr.
Ellsworth had taken him in hand, Roy had become his friend, and John

Temple, president of the Bridgeboro Bank, noticing his amazing
reformation, had become interested in him and in the Boy Scouts as
well.
It had proven a fine thing for Tom and for the Scouts. Mr. Temple had
endowed a large scout camp in the Catskills, which had become a
vacation spot for troops from far and near, and which, during the two
past summers, had been the scene of many lively adventures for the
Bridgeboro boys.
But Tom had to thank Temple Camp and its benevolent founder for
something more than health and recreation and good times. When the
troop had returned from that delightful woodland community in the
preceding autumn and Tom had reached the dignity of long trousers,
the question of what he should do weighed somewhat heavily on Mr.
Ellsworth's mind, for Tom was through school and it was necessary that
he be established in some sort of home and in some form of work
which would enable him to pay his way.
Perhaps Tom's own realization of this had its part in inclining him to go
off to war. In any event, Mr. Ellsworth's perplexities, and to some
extent his anxieties, had come to an end when Mr. Temple had
announced that Temple Camp was to have a city office and a paid
manager for the conduct of its affairs, which had theretofore been
looked after by himself and the several trustees and, to some extent, by
Jeb Rushmore, former scout and plainsman, who made his home at the
camp and was called its manager.
Whether Jeb had fulfilled all the routine requirements may be a
question, but he was the spirit of the camp, the idol of every boy who
visited it, and it was altogether fitting that he should be relieved of the
prosy duties of record-keeping which were now to be relegated to the
little office in Mr. Temple's big bank building in Bridgeboro.
So it was arranged that Tom should work as a sort of assistant to Mr.
Burton in the Temple Camp office and, like Jeb Rushmore, if he fell
short in some ways (he couldn't touch a piece of carbon paper without
getting his fingers smeared) he more than made up in others, for he

knew the camp thoroughly, he could describe the accommodations of
every cabin, and tell you every by-path for miles around, and his
knowledge of the place showed in every letter that went out over Mr.
Burton's name.
From the window, high up on the ninth floor, Tom could look down
behind the big granite bank building upon a narrow, muddy place with
barrel staves for a sidewalk and tenements with conspicuous fire
escapes, and washes hanging on the disorderly roofs. This was Barrel
Alley, where Tom had lived and where his poor, weary mother had
died. He could pick out the very tenement. Strangely enough, this spot
of squalor and unhappy memories held a certain place in his affection
even now.
Tom and Mr. Burton and Miss Ellison, the stenographer, were the only
occupants of the little office, but Mr. Temple usually came upstairs
from the bank each day to confer with Mr. Burton for half an hour or
so.
There was also another visitor who was in the habit of coming upstairs
from the bank and spending many half hours lolling about and chatting.
This was Roscoe Bent, a young fellow who was assistant
something-or-other in the bank and whose fashionable attire and
worldly wisdom caused Tom to stand in great awe of him.
Roscoe made no secret of the fact that he came up in order to smoke
cigarettes, which practice was forbidden down in the bank. He would
come up, smoke a cigarette, chat a while, and then go down again. He
seemed to know by inspiration when Mr. Burton and Mr. Temple were
going to be there. Up to the morning of this very day he had never
shown very much interest in either Tom or Temple Camp, though he
appeared to entertain