And he just sat there, swinging his legs and laughing. It was as good as a circus to see him.

"Go ahead, run," he said; "it won't do you any good. Sink this car in the lake if you want to. That'll just mean a longer time in jail. We should worry. You thought a boy scout didn't know how to hit back, didn't you? Let's see you start the machine. You're a couple of circus clowns, that's what you are. You ought to be a pair of villains in the movies. Head hurt much, Roy?"

"Not so bad now," I told him.

Gee whiz, those fellows didn't wait long. Before Westy was finished speaking they were off the car and headed into the woods. That was the last we saw of them, then.

"Did you ever hear of a thief stopping to have his picture taken?" Westy asked.

"If they'd have only stayed a little longer, we could have got them in the movie camera and we could have a play called The Robbers' Regret," Pee-wee piped up, "or, The Missing Spark Plugs."

"Oh, they're not missing," Westy said; "they're just hiding, disguised as an oil can. Waste not, want not, hey?"

Do you know what that fellow had done—all while we were in the car? Talk about a scout being quick! He had got the snapshots while those two fellows were on the platform. Then he had hid the camera in the bushes. But he wanted to make sure that they wouldn't find the plugs, so he put them into an oil can that he had found under the hood of the machine and tied a piece of wire to the can. He tied the other end of the wire to the root of a bush on the shore. And all that he did while the fellows were in the car. What do you know about that?

So now he just fished them up and cleaned them out and put them back where they belonged. Then we all sat in the Pierce-Arrow waiting to see what would happen next. Right in front of us was that old car with the sign all along its side.

Pretty soon we got to singing, and for a little while everybody was singing something different from everybody else, but after a few minutes we got settled down to this:

"You can talk about tents and log cabins and house-boats and things," Connie said; "but I'm for that old car. It's stood by us."

"Stood!" I said. "Good night, it hasn't stood very long anywhere; not since we had it."

"It's full of pep," Connie said.

"Always on the go," I told him; "it's different from other cars. It reminds me of Pee-wee. I wonder where we'll go next."

"Sure, I wonder what's the next step in our itinerary," Connie said. Boy, but that fellow is some high brow.

"Our whaterary?" I asked him.

"Anyway, it's nice sitting here," Wig said.

"I wonder who it belongs to?" Pee-wee said. "I bet it belongs to a rich millionaire."

"Yes, or a poor one," Connie said. "There's only one thing I don't like about this Pierce-Arrow, and that's that I don't own it. Otherwise, it's all right."

"There's one thing I don't like about it," I said.

"You're crazy!" Pee-wee shouted. "What don't you like about a Pierce-Arrow?"

"One great objection," I said.

"You must be crazy," he yelled. "You can bet I haven't got any objections to a Pierce-Arrow."

"That's because you're not as honest as I am," I said.

"Who? Me?" he hollered.

"The only thing I have against this machine is that it's stolen," I said. "I'm funny that way."

"You make me sick," Pee-wee said.

"I'd feel the same way about a flivver," I said.

"If you took a flivver, that wouldn't be stealing," Connie said; "it would be shoplifting."

"Sure, or pickpocketing," Wig said.

"Do you know the only way to tell if a man has a Ford?" I asked Pee-wee. "Search him. Look how the sun is going down."

The Brewster's Centre sign was all bright on account of the sun setting. It was getting dark and kind of cold and it made me homesick, sort of. It seemed funny to see that car standing there across that strange road, with the lake on one side and the thick woods on the other. The woods were beginning to look dark and gloomy, and the arm of the lake was all steel color. I was glad on account of that sign, because it seemed friendly, like. That's one thing about an automobile, it doesn't seem friendly, like. But boats do. And the old car did, that was one sure thing.

Mostly scouts don't care much about railroads, because they like the water and they like to hike. But anyway, that old car was friendly. Especially it seemed friendly on account of the sun going down and the day beginning to die and it getting cold. You can talk about boats and motorcycles and tents and leaf shelters and all those things, but anyway, none of them were as good as that old car. And don't you forget, either, that it was Westy that saved it for us. If it hadn't been for him, it would have been in the lake.

He's one real scout, Westy is.