Forgive me, old man, if you can." "I don't have to," said Tom.
Roscoe stood there staring at him, thrilled with honest admiration and stung by humiliation.
And as the little group, augmented by other soldiers who strolled over to hear of this extraordinary affair first hand, grew into something of a crowd, Tom, alias Thatchy, alias Paul Revere, alias Towhead, sat upon the fence, answering questions and telling of his great coup with a dull unconcern which left them all gaping.
"As soon as I made up my mind they didn't belong there," he said, "I decided they weren't sure of their own way, kind of.

If the big man hadn't taken the compass away from me, I'd have given it to him anyway.
It had the N changed into an S and the S into an N.I think he kind of thought the other way was right, but when he saw the compass, that settled him.

All the time I was looking at the Big Dipper, 'cause I knew nobody ever tampered with that.

I noticed he never even looked up, but once, and then I was scared.

When we got to the marsh, I was scared, too, 'cause I thought maybe he'd know about the low land being south of the woods.