s him all over. Why should he join
the Silver Foxes when he can shoot buffaloes and Indians and hunt train
robbers and kidnap maidens and dig up buried treasure?"

"Where can he do that?" Pee-wee wanted to know.

"Right in the public library," I told him, "division B, second shelf
from the top. That's a dangerous place, that is; I've known fellows to
get killed in there. There used to be a kid that lived on Willow Place
and he got drowned in a sea story in there."

"What are you talking about?" Pee-wee screamed. He always gets excited
when we jolly him.

"We're talking about adventures," I said; "hair-breadth adventures--not
even as wide as that, some of them. I know a fellow that got buried in a
book; it was absorbing just like quicksand, and he got absorbed in it.
What were you going to do, Kid? Throw the coffee-pot at him if he didn't
join? You didn't intend to hack him to pieces with your scoutknife, did
you? Because a scout is supposed to be kind."

"You make me tired, all of you!" Pee-wee shouted. "Do you want to hear
about it or don't you?"

"Answered in the affirmative," I told him. "Begin at the end and go on
till you come to the beginning."

"Then take the second turn to your left," Westy said.

"That's what I get for trying to do you a good turn," the kid shouted.
"No wonder Warde Hollister said you were all crazy."

"Did he say that?" Westy wanted to know.

"Sure, and other people have said so, too," the kid piped up.

"They don't need to say so, we admit it," I told him. "Go ahead with
your story. What do you want us to do? Light a camp-fire so you can
unravel your yarn?"

"That fellow can be circum--circumnavigated yet," Pee-wee said, very
dark and mysterious.

"Circumvented you mean," Westy said.

"You know what I mean," the kid shouted.

"Go ahead," I told him; "the plot grows thicker."

"Give us a couple of peanuts," Dorry said.

The kid turned his aluminum coffee-pot upside down and, good morning,
sister Anne, it was full of peanuts!

"Let's see what's in the saucepan," I said.

CHAPTER III

A SOLEMN PLEDGE

So then we were all eating peanuts.

I said, "Go ahead, Kid, and tell us. You're a little brick to try to
find us a new member. He didn't fall, hey?"

"He didn't even trip," Westy said.

"Keep still," I told him, "and let the kid tell us."

Pee-wee said, "I dressed all up and wore all my stuff so he'd see just
what a scout is like. Because I thought maybe th