" Westy said.

"No, I won that playing hide and seek with Fritzie in No Man's Land," he
said. "Chuck a little more wood on the fire, Roy."

I said, "There's one thing you never told me about, and you promised to
tell it, too. It's an adventure, but it's a kind of a mystery, too."

"Well," he said, "adventures aren't so much, but I'll have to make an extra
charge for mysteries. The high cost of mysteries is something terrible. I
don't know what the mystery may be, but if you'll go in the house and get
my cigarette case out of the pocket of my coat that's hanging in the
sitting room, I'll let you have any mystery I happen to have in stock at
the wholesale price."

Oh bibbie, didn't I scoot in after that cigarette case. He was always
smoking cigarettes, that fellow. He told us never to do it, but he was
always doing it himself. He said he was too old to reform.

When I came back I said. "It's about that money of yours-that two hundred
dollars that we found in the locker of the house-boat. It made a lot of
trouble in Temple Camp, that's one sure thing. Don't you remember how you
said that you'd tell me all a'bout how you got it, some day?"

He said, "Oh that; that wasn't an adventure; that was just an episode."

"I know what episodes are all right," I told him; "didn't my father have a
couple of them. If there's a narrow escape, that's a sign it's not an
episode; it's an adventure. You can have episodes any day.

"Well, there wasn't a very narrow escape to that one, anyhow," he said,
laughing all the while; "it was about six feet wide, I guess. But here
goes, if you want it. Gather closer around the fire, because this
adventure is mighty wet."

"That's a sure sign it's an adventure," I told him, "because how can an
episode get wet?"

"I guess you're right," he said; "it might get a little damp, but not
really wet. Anyway, do you think you can keep still for about ten minutes?"

CHAPTER XIV

BUT I DIDN'T WRITE IT

The reason I said that about the two hundred dollars causing a lot of
trouble at Temple Camp, was, because a little fellow there named Skinny
McCord (you'll see him after a while) was suspected of stealing it. A lot
of fellows thought he took it from a fellow while he was saving the fellow
from drowning and then hid it in the house-boat. They thought _that_ just
because he went to the house-boat, and because they found out that he had
a key to the locker. But all the while that money belonged to H