"Doctor Killem took me in his auto. We had to turn around and come back when we came to the bridge burning down. He's going to take me another way. I saw a man getting dead."

"Where?" Pee-wee asked, his interest somewhat aroused,

"Will you give me that tin thing if I tell you?"

"That isn't a tin thing, it's a compa.s.s, it tells you which way to go.

"Can it talk?"

"No, it can't talk."

"Then how can it tell you?"

"It points its finger."

"You're crazy."

"All right," Pee-wee laughed in spite of himself. "You tell me about the man getting dead and I'll give you the tin thing."

"He was lying down in the bushes and wriggling."

"Where? Near the bridge?" Pee-wee asked.

"Doctor Killem didn't see him and he laughed at me. He said I was seeing things. Can you wriggle? I looked back out of the window and saw him."

"Did you tell your father about it?" Pee-wee asked, hardly knowing what to think of this information.

"My mother made him give her the two hundred and fifty dollars so I wouldn't get dead. Do you know what I'm going to be when I grow up?"

"No; what?"

"A giant."

"Well, you'd better hurry up about it."

"Do you know where my father got that two hundred and fifty dollars?"

"Where?"

"It was a prize for catching thieves. You can't catch thieves."

"I know it," Pee-wee said.

"Are you going to be a thief when you grow up?"

"No, I guess not," said Pee-wee.

"You can have three guesses."

"All right, I guess not three times. Now, tell me if you told your father about seeing that man getting dead."

"Yes, and he said I'm always seeing things; everybody says that. Maybe I'll get dead when it rains."

"Don't you believe it," Pee-wee said; "Licorice Stick's been telling you that. Didn't you say you were going to be a giant first?"

"You're not a giant."

Alas, Pee-wee knew this only too well. He knew too that it would be quite impossible to get anything in the way of a connected narrative out of this stern little autocrat. Whether he had actually been "seeing things" or had only seen something in his queer little inner life, who should say? Evidently no one took him very seriously. And this fact did not seem to trouble him at all. Removing the compa.s.s cord from about his neck, Pee-wee advanced to proffer his second gift to the Bungel family.

Little did that stiff, serious little figure know that the much-needed money which Mrs. Bungel had been wise enough to take from her husband, had come from the same source. Pee-wee searched in vain for any sign of hands in those enveloping blankets. There were no hands, there seemed to be no body even; just two eyes looking straight ahead as if their owner were not going to a.s.sist at all in the transfer of the little gift. So Pee-wee laid the compa.s.s on the porch rail.

"There you are," he said; "that needle always points to the north."

The two severe eyes stared down at the compa.s.s on the rail but their owner made no attempt to reach it as Pee-wee started off. If Pee-wee had not been so worried and preoccupied he would have thought that he had never seen anything so absurdly amusing in all his life.

"Come back and say good-by," the little voice commanded.

Pee-wee returned and stood in the exact spot where he had stood before and said, "Good-by." Although the little pale face did not turn the fraction of an inch, the staring eyes followed Pee-wee as he went along the road.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

THE TRAMPLED TRAIL

Pee-wee felt as if he were emerging from some enchanted spot in the "Arabian Nights," abounding with giants and men "getting dead." He had no more belief in what this imperious little imp had told him than he had in the predictions of Licorice Stick, or the homely superst.i.tions of Pepsy.

Indeed, if he had thought seriously of these erratic snapshot bits of information about figures wriggling in the dark and "getting dead" he would never have mentioned these things to Licorice Stick whom he ran plunk into as that aggregation of rags and nonsense sat upon a stone wall up the road engaged in the profitable occupation of watching the pa.s.sing cars. Licorice Stick's business was contemplating the world and he always attended strictly to business.

"Lordy me!" he said, rolling his eyes, "you don' go nowheres that kid 'e tell you. Dat wrigglin' man, he no man, he a sperrit. Don' you go near dat bridge, you get a spell. Yo keep away f'm dat bridge."

How much this had to do with Pee-wee's actually going to the scene of the fire it would be hard to say. If he had not talked with Whitie he probably would not have gone. At all events, he had nothing else to do and he wanted to think. So he followed the trail through the woods to the highway.

It seemed quite probable that Whitie's jerky sentences were about true, that the doctor had been compelled to turn back by reason of the burning bridge. The fact that Whitie was holding his imperial court on the doctor's porch made this part of his story seem true.

Perhaps it would be about right to say that little Whitie's spasmodic announcements directed Pee-wee in his idle wanderings on that morning when he was fearful and sick at heart.

Long afterwards he remembered with interest that it was little Whitie Bungel (for whose recovery he had sacrificed two hundred and fifty dollars and not a little glory) who put him in the way of the terrible discovery that he made on that fateful day. And the funny thing about it was that the little gnome had given the clue to his benefactor and not his father who knew nothing about the frightful revelation of that morning until it was all over.

So perhaps there is a little G.o.d of good turns after all, who, all unseen, administers punches in the nose and pays back two hundred and fifty dollar gifts and so forth, and has the time of his life watching how these things work out. Or a "pay back sperrit" as Licorice Stick might have called him. ...

As Pee-wee approached the scene of the fire he saw in the bushes something which caught his eye. This was a torn fragment of clothing.

The bushes were trampled down at the spot. It was not hard for the scout to follow this line of trampled brush which was so disordered that he thought it could not have been caused by a walking or fleeing person. It was well away from the area where the men had fought the flames.

Here and there something brown and sticky on the leaves caught the scout's eye. Some one had crawled stealthily through here. Or else dragged himself through. Pee-wee shuddered at this thought. He examined the trampled channel more carefully. And from this examination he was satisfied of one fact which made him uneasy, apprehensive.

The weight which had crushed the bush down had been a p.r.o.ne, dead weight. At intervals of perhaps three or four feet were gathered wounded strands of the tall gra.s.s, as if some groping hand had reached ahead, gathering and pulling on them. Pulling a helpless weight. Pee-wee knew this for he saw with the eyes of a scout.