His medals were home somewhere.

And out of all this alluring rigmarole and romantic glory were left the deeper marks of scout training, burned into his soul as the mark is burned into the skin of a broncho.

The woods, the trees, were his.

That, after all, is the highest award in scouting.

It is a medal that one does not lose, and it lasts forever.
As Tom Slade stood there looking down upon the camp, one might have seen in him the last and fullest accomplishment of scouting, stripped of all else.