h, Sing Sing?" Roy asked. "I never thought of that."

"Feller scaled the wall last night an' made off in a boat."

The boys were silent. They had not realized how close they were to
Ossining, and the thought of the great prison whose name they had often
heard mentioned sobered them a little; the mere suggestion of one of its
inmates scaling its frowning wall on such a night and setting forth in
an open boat, perhaps lurking near their very shelter, cast a shadow
over them.

"Are you--are you _sure_ you didn't see a--a crouching shadow when you
went out and got that gasoline can last night?" Pee-wee stammered.

"I'm sorry," said Roy, "but I didn't see one crouching shadow."

"His boat might have upset in the storm," Tom suggested. "The wind even
shook this boat; it must have been pretty rough out on the river."

"Like enough," said the man. "Des'pret characters'll take des'pret
chances."

"What did he do?" Pee-wee asked, his imagination thoroughly aroused.

"Dunno," said the man. "Burglary, like enough. Well now, you youngsters
have had yer shelter'n the wust o' the storm's over. It's goin' ter keep
right on steady like this till after full moon, an' the ole shebang'll
be floppin' roun' the marsh like enough on full moon tide. My advice to
you is to git along. Not that you done no damage or what _I'd_ call
damage--but it won't do no good fer yer to run amuck o' Ole Man Stanton.
'Cause he's a reg'lar grizzly, as the feller says."

The boys were silent a moment. Perhaps the thought of that desperate
convict stealing forth amid the wind and rain still gripped them; but it
began to dawn upon them also that they had been trespassing and that
they had taken great liberties with this ramshackle boat.

That the owner could object to their use of it seemed preposterous. That
he could take advantage of the technical "damage" done was quite
unsupposable. But no one knows better than a boy how many "grouchy" men
there are in the world, and these very boys had once been ordered out of
John Temple's lot with threat and menace.

"Does _everybody_ call him 'Old Man' Stanton?" Pee-wee asked. "Because
if they do that's pretty bad. Whenever somebody is known as 'Old Man' it
sounds pretty bad for him. They used to say 'Old Man Temple'--he's a man
we know that owns a lot of railroads and things; of course, he's
reformed now--he's a magnet----"

"Magnate," corrected Roy.

"But they _used_ to call him 'Old Man Temple'--everybody