vided another
means of secrecy and an additional safeguard against intrusion. It is
true that during the half-hour immediately following the installation
of this convenience, there was a little violence among the brothers
concerning a question of policy. Sam, Roddy and Verman--Verman
especially--wished to use the tube "to talk through" and Maurice, Penrod
and Herman wished to use it "to drink through." As a consequence of the
success of the latter party, the shack became too damp for habitation
until another day, and several members, as they went home at dusk, might
easily have been mistaken for survivors of some marine catastrophe.

Still, not every shack is equipped with running water, and exuberance
befitted the occasion. Everybody agreed that the afternoon had been one
of the most successful and important in many weeks. The Order of the
In-Or-In was doing splendidly, and yet every brother felt, in his heart,
that there was one thing that could spoil it. Against that fatality,
all were united to protect themselves, the shack, the rixual, the
opera-glasses and the water-and-speaking tube. Sam spoke not only for
himself but for the entire order when he declared, in speeding the last
parting guest:

"Well, we got to stick to one thing or we might as well quit! GEORGIE
BASSETT better not come pokin' around!"

"No, SIR!" said Penrod.

CHAPTER VI. GEORGIE BECOMES A MEMBER

But Georgie did. It is difficult to imagine how cause and effect could
be more closely and patently related. Inevitably, Georgie did come
poking around. How was he to refrain when daily, up and down the
neighbourhood, the brothers strutted with mystic and important airs,
when they whispered together and uttered words of strange import in his
presence? Thus did they defeat their own object. They desired to keep
Georgie at a distance, yet they could not refrain from posing before
him. They wished to impress upon him the fact that he was an outsider,
and they but succeeded in rousing his desire to be an insider, a desire
that soon became a determination. For few were the days until he not
only knew of the shack but had actually paid it a visit. That was upon a
morning when the other boys were in school, Georgie having found himself
indisposed until about ten o'clock, when he was able to take nourishment
and subsequently to interest himself in this rather private errand.
He climbed the Williams' alley fence, and, having made a modest
investigation