we got off the train.”

“No, that’s the kind of a yacht boys have in twenty-five cent stories,” said Roy; “I saw that one; it’s a pippin, isn’t it? Guess it belongs to a millionaire, hey? No, ours is just a little cabin launch—poor, but honest, tangoes along at about six miles an hour and isn’t ashamed. Do you want the full story?”

“If there aren’t any stockings and stone-walls in it,” someone suggested.

“All right, here goes,” said Roy, settling, himself into his favorite posture before the fire, with his hands clasped about his drawn-up knees and the bright blaze lighting up his face.

“You see, it was this way. Pee-wee Harris is the what’d you say his name is—Lord? Pee-wee Harris over there is the Gordon Lord of our troop. And Tom Slade is our famous detective—Sherlock Nobody Holmes.

“Well, Tom and Pee-wee and I started ahead of the others last summer to hike it up here. Pee-wee got very tired (here he dodged a missile from Pee-wee) and so we were all glad when we got a little above Nyack and things began to happen. They happened in large chunks.

“On the way up Pee-wee captured a pet bird that belonged to a little girl (oh, he’s a regular gallant little lad, he is); he got the bird down out of a tree for her and to show how happy she was she began to cry.”

“Gee, they’re awful funny, ain’t they?” commented Gordon Lord.

“Well, we beat it along till we hit the Hudson, then we started north. The shadows of night were falling.”

“You read that in a book,” interrupted Pee-wee.

Little Raymond was greatly amused. So was Mr. Ellsworth who poked up the fire and resumed his seat on the old bench beside Jeb Rushmore.

“Team work,” someone suggested, slyly, indicating Gordon and Pee-wee.

“The kindergarten class will please be quiet,” said Roy. “I repeat, the shadows of night were tumbling. It began to rain. And it rained, and it rained—and it rained.

“Suddenly, we saw this boat—we thought it was a shanty at first—in the middle of a big marsh. So we plowed our way through the muck and crawled into it. Pity the poor sailors on a night like that!

“Well, believe me, it was too sweet for anything in that old cabin. Pee-wee wasn’t homesick any more (here Roy dodged again) and we settled down for the night. The rain came down in sheets and pillowcases and things and the cruel wind played havoc—I mean it blew—and shook the old boat just as if she’d been in the water. But what cared we—yo, ho, my lads—we cared naught!

“Well, in the morning along came an old codger with a badge and said he was a sheriff. He was looking for an escaped convict and we didn’t suit. He told us the boat was owned by an old grouch in Nyack and said if we didn’t want to be arrested for trespassing and destroying property we’d better beat it. He told us some more about the old grouch, and I guess Pee-wee and I thought the best thing to do was to hike it right along for Haverstraw and not wait for trouble. We had chopped up a couple of old stanchions for firewood—worth about two Canadian dimes, they were, but our friend said old What’s-his-name would be only too glad to call that stealing and send us to jail. Honest, that old hulk was a sight. You wouldn’t have thought anybody would want to admit that he owned such a ramshackle old pile of junk and that’s why we made so free with it.

“Well, zip goes the fillum! Here’s where Tom comes on the scene. He said that if that was the kind of a gink Old Crusty was we’d have to go and see him and tell him what we’d done. He just blurted it out in that sober way of his and Pee-wee was scared out of his——”

This time Pee-wee landed a wad of uprooted grass in Roy’s face.

“Pee-wee, as I said, was—with us (dodging again). The sheriff must have thought Tom was crazy. He gave us a—some kind of a scope—what d’you call it—when they read your fortune?”

“Horoscope?” suggested Arnold, smiling.

“Correct—I thank you. He told us that we’d be in jail by night. You ought to have seen Pee-wee stare. I told him he ought not to kick—he’d been shouting for adventures and here was a good one. So we trotted back to Nyack behind Tom and strode boldly up to Old Crusty’s office and—here’s where the film changes—”

“Go ahead,” said Arnold. “You’ve got me started now.”

“Well, who do you think Old Crusty was?”

“Not the escaped convict!”

“Not on your life! He turned out to be the father of the little girl whose pet bird Pee-wee had captured the day before.”

“The plot grows thinner,” said someone.

“Well, he had all the signs of an old grouch, hair ruffled up, spectacles half-way down his nose—but he fell for Pee-wee, you can bet.

“When he found out who we were (the girl must have told him about us, I suppose) he got kind of interested and when Pee-wee started to explain things he couldn’t keep from laughing. Well, in the end he said the only way we could square ourselves was to take the boat away; he said it belonged to his son who was dead, and that he didn’t want it and we were welcome to it and he’d send us a couple of men to help us launch it. He seemed to feel pretty bad when he mentioned his son and we were so surprised and excited at getting the boat that we just stood there gaping. Gee, how can you thank a man when he gives you a cabin launch?”

Arnold shook his head.

“Well, we spent a couple of days and eight dollars and fifty-two cents fixing the boat up and then, sure enough, along came two men and Mr. Stanton’s chauffeur to jack the boat over and launch her for us. The girl came along, too, in their auto, and oh, wasn’t she tickled! Brought us a lot of eats and a flag she’d made, and stayed to wish us—what do you call it?”

“Bon voyage?”

“Correct—I thank you. Understand, I’m only giving you the facts. We had more fun those three days and that night launching the boat than you could shake a stick at. Well, when we got her in the water I noticed the girl had gone off a little way and kept staring at it. Gee, the boat did look pretty nice when she got in the water. I thought maybe she was kind of thinking about her brother, you know, and it put it into my head to ask one of the men how he died. She didn’t come near us while we talked, but stood off there by herself staring at the launch. You see, it was the first time she’d seen it in the water since he was lost, and she was almost crying—I could tell that.

“Well, this is what the man told me. They said this Harry Stanton and another fellow named Benty Willis were out in the launch on a stormy night. There was a skiff belonging to the launch, and people thought they must have been in that, fishing. Anyway, the next morning, they found the skiff broken and swamped to her gunwale and right near it the body of the other fellow. The launch was riding on her anchor same as the night before. The men said Mr. Stanton was so broken up that he had the boat hauled ashore and a flood carried her up on the marsh where she was going to pieces when we found her. He would never look at her again. They said Harry Stanton could swim and that made some people think that maybe they were run down by one of the big night boats on the Hudson and that Harry was injured—killed that way, maybe.

“Anyway, when the girl got in the auto and said good-bye to us I could see she’d been crying all right, and she said we must be careful and not run at night on account of the