WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS

What Justice Dopett might have tried to persuade Pee-wee to do if there had been more time, one cannot predict. Apparently he did not relish the idea of leaving the little hero from his home town alone at the spot. But there was Townsend to be considered. The situation seemed unusual.

And moreover, though the law’s delays are well known, the engineer of an express train is not usually in favor of dilatory tactics. At first the justice seemed disposed to stop over himself but he revised this friendly inclination and wrote a note “to whom it might concern” on an official letter-head which he had in his wallet.

That note is still a treasured possession of the new Alligator Patrol. Like the Declaration of Independence it is shown to the curious at the Bridgeboro Scout Headquarters, and tenderfoot scouts contemplate it with reverence and awe.

It stated that Townsend Ripley and Walter Harris were personally known to the writer, that they were scouts, and that to the certain knowledge of the writer the elder of the two boys had qualified and received a New Jersey license to drive an automobile. It stated further that this license card had been “unavoidably lost en route” (that was the phrase Pee-wee liked best) and that another had not yet been issued.

The writer requested that his personal certification of Townsend Ripley’s authority and competency to drive a car be accepted till the hoys reached their destination. It was signed with the imposing official signature of Justice Dopett, of the State Supreme Court and if it had been the Emancipation Proclamation of Lincoln, Pee-wee could not have guarded it more fearfully.

During all this excitement a couple of trainmen had gone ahead and examined the old switch. They found it set as it had been for seven years past, securely fixed and powerless to beguile a train to catastrophe. Its deadly fangs had been pulled; a little iron wedge locked it securely and no amount of pulling could have changed it. The lever against which Pee-wee had stumbled had long been disconnected.

But they did not bother to tell Pee-wee this; they were in too great a hurry to get away. All they told him was that he had better keep away from railroad property. So the owner of the sturdy little brown arm that held the red lantern out and of the keen, anxious eyes that watched the dying ember down below, never knew that his splendid exploit had been quite superfluous.

He had stopped a train of eleven cars and two baggage cars (he counted them as the train moved away) and he had done it because he “had resources” and that was all he thought about. As he stood in the road, a tiny figure in the vast darkness waiting for the train to move away, the passengers waved cheerily to him and the funny travelling man called down out of the smoking room of the Pullman for him not to worry about the license disagreeing with the goat for it was only a license for a small car.

“You bet your life he won’t get this,” called Pee-wee, clutching the judge’s letter. “Gee whiz, you bet your life he won’t get this.”