Aaron Harlowe was lying on his cot in the little rustic hospital at Temple Camp. It was worth being sick to lie in that hospital. It was just a log cabin. The birds sang outside of it, you could hear the breeze blowing in the trees, you could hear the ripple of paddles on the lake.

Tom Slade sat upon the side of the cot.

"You see when I found the map, I knew you had gone up the mountain. And I didn't think you'd go up there unless there was some one up there that you knew. The light was up there before you went up. Now that you tell me you went up there to hide with that friend of yours, everything fits together. I knew there must have been two of you up there, because I saw your footprint. You have a patch on the sole of your shoe and the dead man didn't. See? When I asked you to get out of the auto it was just because I wanted to see your footprint. Your always getting over to the left hand side of the road made me a little suspicious. Footprints don't lie and that clinched it."

"But did you see my image in the eyes of the dead man?" Harlowe asked weakly.

"I saw an image of a man; I couldn't tell it was you. But I knew some one else had been there. Do you feel like telling me the rest now? Or would you rather wait."

"You seem to know it all," Harlowe smiled. It was pleasant to see that smile upon his pale, thin face.

"It isn't what you know, it's what you do that counts," said Tom softly. "And see what you did. Talk about heroism!"

It was from the desultory talk which followed that Tom was able to piece out the story, the mystery of which he had already penetrated. Harlowe, in fear of capture after his supposed killing of the child, had sought refuge in the hunting shack of his friend upon the mountain. There the two had lived till the night of the storm. When Harlowe's friend had been crushed under the tree, Harlowe had bent over him to make sure that he was dead. It was then, in the blinding storm, that his license cards had fallen out of his pocket and, by the merest chance, on the open coat of the dead man.

Harlowe said that after that he had intended to give himself up, but that when he read that Harlowe had been discovered, and no doubt buried, he had resolved to let his crime and all its consequences be buried with the dead man, who like himself was without relations.

But Harlowe's conscience had not been buried, and it was in a kind of mad attempt to square himself before Heaven, and still the voice of that silent, haunting accuser, that he had performed the most signal act of heroism and willing sacrifice ever known at Temple Camp.

As Tom Slade emerged after his daily call on the convalescent, a song greeted his ear and he became aware of Hervey Willetts, hat, stocking and all, coming around the edge of the cooking shack. He was caroling a verse of his favorite ballad:

"The life of a scout is kind,
is kind,
His handbook he never can find,
can find.
He don't bother to look,
In the little handbook.
The life of a scout is kind."

"Hunting for your handbook, Hervey?"

"I should fret out my young life about the handbook."

"Walking my way?"

"Any way, I'm not particular."

"Cross come yet?"

"I haven't seen it. Do you think it would look good on my hat?"

"Why, yes," Tom laughed. "Only be sure to pin it on upside down."

"Why?"

"Why, because then when you're standing on your head, it'll be right side up. See?"

"Good idea. I guess I will, hey?"

"Sure, I—I double dare you to," said Tom.

END