considered the better strategy would be to wait where he was, where
the three roads met, and allow the enemy himself to disclose his
position.  To the scout this course was most distasteful.  He
assured himself that this was so because, while it were the safer
course, it wasted time and lacked initiative.  But in his heart he
knew that was not the reason, and to his heart his head answered
that when one's country is at war, when fields and fire-sides are
trampled by the iron heels of the invader, a scout should act not
according to the dictates of his heart, but in the service of his
native land.  In the case of this particular patriot, the man and
scout were at odds.  As one of the Bicycle Squad of the Boston
Corps of Cadets, the scout knew what, at this momentous crisis in
her history, the commonwealth of Massachusetts demanded of him.  It
was that he sit tight and wait for the hated foreigners from New
York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut to show themselves.  But the
man knew, and had known for several years, that on the road to
Carver was the summer home of one Beatrice Farrar.  As Private
Lathrop it was no part of his duty to know that.  As a man and a
lover, and a rejected lover at that, he could not think of anything
else.  Struggling between love and duty the scout basely decided to