ing it.

"I bet somebody's robbed him and killed him," Westy said, kind of low.

"That's just what I'm thinking," I said, "and when we open that door
we'll see him lying on the floor dead, hey?"

"Anyway, we have to open it," he said.

"I'll open it if you don't want to," I told him.

But, anyway, neither of us opened it. We just stood there and I felt
awful funny. It was all still and spooky and you could hear the clock
ticking, and I counted the ticks. It sounded spooky, going tick, tick,
tick.

Then Westy said, "Shall I open it?"

"Sure," I said, "we've got to sometime."

So he opened it just a little bit and then, all of a sudden, he pushed
it wide open and we looked into that other room.

CHAPTER XXX

GONE

In the middle of the room was a table Jimmy always ate his meals at, and
on that table was a big square piece of paper and there was a big
envelope on the floor. But there wasn't any sign of Jimmy. Oh, boy,
didn't I feel good on account of that. Westy read the paper out loud
and it was something about a convention of the Grand Army, or something
like that. It said how all the members of some post or other were asked
to go to Saratoga on account of that big convention and it was addressed
to "Comrade James Van Dorian." Gee, I felt awful sorry for him, sort
of, because I knew how it was with him.

"He just couldn't help it," Westy said, "he got ready in a hurry and
went. I guess he took all the money he had saved up-poor old Jimmy."

"He'll lose his job, that's sure," I said.

Even while we were standing there I could kind of see him getting dressed
up in a hurry in that old blue coat he had, with the buttons all falling
off it, and starting off with his crutch. Maybe he just got his pension
money, hey?

All the while the whistle on the tug was blowing and I was afraid people
would come around and maybe they'd all be on the side of the tugboat man
and be mad at Uncle Jimmy.

Jiminy, I wasn't mad at him, anyway. And I could hear that old man
shouting about all the things he was going to do and about the
bridgeman deserting and leaving him in the mud.

"Hurry up," Westy said, "let's find the key-bar and we'll open it for
him, we can do it all right."

So we looked all around in a hurry, but we couldn't find it anywhere.
The key-bar is what you open the bridge with, you know. It's kind of
like a crow-bar and you stick it in a certain place and walk around
pushing it. It isn't so hard whe