You might have seen something out of the ordinary then in
that stolid face. After a moment he turned and went down the hill and
around the corner of the big bank building, passed Ching Woo's laundry,
into which he had once thrown dirty barrel staves, picked his way
through the mud of Barrel Alley and entered the door of the tenement
where Mrs. O'Connor lived. He had not slept there for three nights. The
sound of cats wailing and trucks rattling and babies crying was not much
like the soughing of the wind in the elms up on the Blakeley lawn. But
if you have hit the right trail and have a good conscience you can
sleep, and Tom slept fairly well amid the din and uproar.
CHAPTER V
FIRST COUP OF THE MASCOT
Anyway, he slept better than Roy slept. All night long the leader of the
Silver Foxes was haunted by that letter. The darkness, the breeze, the
soothing music of crickets and locusts outside his little tent
dissipated his anger, as the voices of nature are pretty sure to do, and
made him see straight, to use Tom's phrase.
He thought of Tom making his lonely way back to Barrel Alley and going
to bed there amid the very scenes which he had been so anxious to have
him forget. He fancied him sitting on the edge of his cot in Mrs.
O'Connor's stuffy dining room, reading his Scout Manual. He was always
reading his Manual; he had it all marked up like a blazed trail. Roy got
small consolation now from the fact that he had procured Tom's election.
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