I looked, and then, for once, I had sense enough to do the right thing
in a hurry. I closed the shutter in the apparatus.

"Did you see them?" Pee-wee whispered, all excited.

"Sure," I said; "two men."

They were lying on the top of the car, right close against a big, long
thing like a boiler. It was much bigger than the thing on our car. One
was lying on one side of it, and the other one on the opposite side. The
reason I shut the light off in such a hurry was because I didn't want
them to know they were seen.

"Are they train robbers?" Pee-wee whispered to me. "Are they
highwaymen?"

"They're high enough to be highwaymen," I told him.

"Maybe they're bandits, hey?" he said.

"I hope so, for your sake," I told him. "I hope they're a couple of
pirates, but I guess they're only tramps. Come on, let's go down."

We dangled the movie apparatus down and the fellows took it in through
the window. Then they came out on the platform and helped the kid and me
down. That was a pretty hard job, believe _me_. Just as we got our feet
on terra what d'ye call it.--I mean terra cotta[A]--that Latin for
platform--anyway, you know what I mean--as soon as we got our two feet
(I mean four feet) on the platform, the two men with lanterns had just
reached it.

One of the men said, "What's all this? What are you doing here, anyway?
Who are you?" Gee whiz, it sounded like an examination paper.

Whenever we get mixed up with grown-up people it's usually me--I mean
_I_--that has to do the talking. Pee-wee usually helps though. So I gave
the men our regular motto.

I said, "We're here because we're here. Ask me something easy. This is
the Comedy of Errors." I said that because we have the Comedy of Errors
in school and I just happened to think of it.

I guess the man was the fireman; anyway, he had on a jumper. He walked
into the car and looked all around with his lantern and the other man
looked all around, too, trying to size us up, I guess.

The fireman said, "Comedy of Errors, huh?"

Pee-wee said, "Sure, that's in Shakespeare."

"Well, it's mighty gol darn lucky you had a movie machine along," the
fireman said. "You youngsters have had a _mighty narrow_ escape."

"Why shouldn't it be a narrow escape?" Connie said. "It's a narrow
bridge. Anyway, where do we go from here?"

"There's a couple of men lying on the top of one of your cars, too,"
Pee-wee said; "we could see them by the light."

"Tramps, I guess," the brakema