But they passed through here without pause or question and soon were near enough to the flickering light to see that it burned in a house.
Again Roscoe looked perplexedly behind him, but the light there was not visible at all now.

Again the officer stopped and, as Tom watched him fearfully, he glanced about and then looked again at the compass.
For one brief moment the huge figure stood there, outlined in the darkness as if doubting.

And Tom, looking impassive and dogged, held his breath in an agony of suspense.
It was nothing and they moved on again, Roscoe, in complete repudiation of his better self, indulging his sullen anger and making Tom and the Scouts (as if they had anything to do with it) the victims of his cutting shafts.
And still again the big, medal-bespangled officer paused to look at the compass, glanced, suspiciously, Tom thought, at the faint shadow of a road ahead of them, and moved on, his medals clanging and chinking in unison with his martial stride.
And Tom Slade of Temple Camp, Scout of the Circle and the Five Points, winner of the Acorn and the Indianhead, glanced up from time to time at the quiet, trustful stars.
If he thought of any human being then, it was not of Roscoe Bent (not _this_ Roscoe Bent, in any event), but of a certain young friend far away, he did not know where.

And he thanked Archibald Archer, vandal though he was, for, one idle, foolish thing that he had done.
[1] The woods near Bridgeboro, in America, where Tom and the Scouts had hiked and camped..