ent
across the water, as though bowing in humble obeisance to it.

"Gee, it's lonely, isn't it!" said Pee-wee.

"Not getting homesick, are you, kiddo?"

"No, but it seems kind of lonesome. I'm glad there's three of us. Oh,
jiminy, look at those hills."

The scene was indeed such as to make the mightiest man feel
insignificant.

The map showed a road which led to Haverstraw, and this the boys decided
to follow until they should find a convenient spot in which to bivouac
for the night. It followed the Hudson, sometimes running along the very
brink with the mighty highlands rising above it and sometimes running
between hills which shut the river from their view.

"Hark," said Tom. "What did I tell you! Thunder!"

A low, distant rumble sounded, and as they paused in the gathering
darkness, listening, a little fitful gust blew Pee-wee's hat off.

"We're going to get a good dose of it," said Tom. "I've been smelling it
for the last hour; look at those trees."

The leaves were blowing this way and that.

"We should worry," said Roy. "Didn't I tell you we might have to get our
feet wet? This is a risky bus----"

"Shut up!" said Pee-wee.

They had walked not more than a quarter of a mile more when they came
upon a stretch of road which was very muddy, with a piece of lowland
bordering it. It was too dark to see clearly, but in the last remnant of
daylight the boys could just distinguish a small, peculiar looking
structure in the middle of this vast area.

"That's a funny place to build a house," said Roy.

"Maybe it's a fisherman's shack," Tom suggested.

Whatever it was, it was a most isolated and lonesome habitation,
standing in the centre of that desert flat, shut in by the precipitous
hills.

"It would be a good place for a hermit," said Roy. "You don't suppose
anyone lives there, do you?"

"Cracky, wouldn't you like to be a hermit! Do you know what I'd like to
have now----"

"An umbrella," interrupted Tom.

The remark, notwithstanding that it shocked Pee-wee's sense of fitness,
inasmuch as they were scouting and "roughing it," was not inappropriate,
for even as Tom spoke the patter of great drops was heard.

"Maybe it's been raining here this afternoon," observed Tom, "and that's
what makes all this mud."

"Well, it's certainly raining here now," said Roy. "Me for that shack!"

The rain suddenly came down in torrents and the boys turned up their
collars and made a dash across the marshy land tow