"I'm not, I'm sleepy," Pee-wee shouted. "Have you got anything to say around here?"

"Well, I _think_ I have, I'm constable," said Ham.

"Then why aren't you sure?" Pee-wee retorted. "Just because I don't know where I am it doesn't say I don't know what I'm talking about, does it? Will you help me drive this automobile back? You'll get some money if you do. I had an adventure with a couple of thieves and I foiled them; they've got seventy pistols. I was watching The Bandit of Harrowing Highway--"

"You got into bad company, youngster," said Ham, surveying Pee-wee's rakish cap and lawless looking sweater. "You ought to be thankful you got a chance to get rid of that sort o' company. You're kinder young, I reckon, ain't you? Gosh, I calculate you ain't more'n four foot high.

Kinder young to be mixed up in stealings."

"You're the one that's mixed up," Pee-wee shouted, "and anyway size doesn't count. You can--you can steal things if you're--you're only a foot high--if you want to and--"

"How about all this, Peter?" asked his friend confidentially.

"I'll tell you," Pee-wee shouted; "I had a lot of adventures, I know two men that have, _shh_, they have _dead ones to their credit_! I circ.u.m--what d'you call it--vented them, and that man that just ran away, he was a traitor, but I can--"

"Can you keep still a second? One look at you is enough," said Ham Sanders.

"I've--I've got--three scout suits," Pee-wee began.

"Like enough you stole 'em," said Ham. "You're one of them runners for crooks, that's what you are. I know the kind; they have you to climb in the windows for 'em and all that. Now you keep still a minute if you know what's best for you."

In a brief and threatened few moments of silence Peter told in a whisper how he had seen the signal and read it and stopped the car, and of the flight of the head thief, as he called him. Between these two excited youngsters Ham hardly knew what to believe. He certainly did not believe in talking lights appearing over graveyards. Nor did he credit Pee-wee's vehement and choppy account of bandits with seventy pistols.

"Whar are these here dead ones?" he asked, rather confused. "Over yonder in the graveyard?"

"How do I know where they are?" Pee-wee shouted. "Do you know what blackjacks are?"

"Dots and dashes, you can do it with lights too," said Peter; "they tell the truth. If he says signals lie that shows he isn't a scout anyway, and anybody can see he isn't. I stopped them, I did it by myself."

"That's nothing," Pee-wee shouted from the seat, "I nearly got suffocated, I'm more of a hero than you are. That man that ran away he--he--_duped_ me. This car--will you listen--this car--"

"It's stolen; _I_ know," said Peter.

"It _was_ stolen but it _isn't_ stolen," Pee-wee fairly screamed. "Can't a thing be stolen and then not stolen? It's being--being rescued--"

"It's being stolen, the other thief ran away," Peter persisted. "He--he admits he was friends with a thief! He's a thief too, he is."

"Maybe Jim disguised--kind of--as a thief," Pee-wee conceded.

"He's trying to be disguised as a scout," poor Peter said.

"I was a scout before you or anybody else was born," Pee-wee shouted.

"He isn't," said Peter.

"I am," said Pee-wee.

Ham Sanders scratched his head, looking from one to the other, then looked appealingly at his familiar milk cans. Perhaps he expected to see them dancing around in this Bedlam.

"I'm gonter hev both of you youngsters before the peace justice," he finally said; "we'll soon find out what's wrong here. Climb down out o'

that car, you, and come along with me, the both of you."

"Do you think I'm scared of him?" Pee-wee demanded as he climbed down.

"You _will_ be scared of him, he's got a big book," said Peter.

"I ain't scared of big books," Pee-wee announced; "I know bigger books, camp registers; I bet it isn't as big as a map book."

"You'll see," said Peter, darkly.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE CULPRIT AT THE BAR

The book could not have been so very big, for Justice of the Peace Fee lived in a very small house. It was almost concealed among trees fifty yards or so up the road.

Justice Fee was one of those shrewd, easy-going, stern but good-natured, lawyers that one meets away off in the country. He was altogether removed from that obnoxious thing, the small town lawyer. Up in the edge of his gray hair rested a pair of spectacles, with octagon shaped lenses, almost completely camouflaged by his grizzled locks. These spectacles were seldom where they belonged, on his nose.

Apparently he wore them; to bed, for after several minutes of knocking by the visitors, he appeared with them on, the while groping for the sleeve of an old coat he had partly donned. He took the callers into a room with a desk in the middle of it and sat down at this, facing them, his legs sticking out through the s.p.a.ce in the middle. Then he opened the large book as if making ready to close somebody up in it as one presses a flower.

He contemplated Pee-wee with a rather curious frown as he listened to what Ham and then Peter (greatly agitated) had to say.

Our young hero, indeed, presented anything but a creditable picture. The old gray sweater used by the man who took care of the furnace in Pee-wee's home, the cap which he held, and his grimy face, made him look like a terrible example of hoodlumism; a trolley-car hoodlum, an apple-stealing and stone-throwing and hooky-playing hoodlum; a hole-in-the-ball-field-fence hoodlum. Nor did the terrible scowl with which he now challenged fate and the world help to make him look like the boy on the cover of the scout manual; the boy that Peter knew and worshipped.

"Well now," drawled Peace Justice Fee, casting a tolerant side glance at Pee-wee, "you tell me this whole business and you tell me the _plain truth_. See?"

"Sure I will," Pee-wee said; "I'll tell you all my adventures--"

"Never mind about your adventures, and watch out, because the first lie you tell--" The justice held up a warning finger. "Now answer me this, never mind anything else; we'll drop a plumb-line right down to the bottom of this thing and have no beating round the bush--"

"I beat lots of bushes for rabbits," Pee-wee vociferated.

"Well, don't beat any here. Now" (the justice spoke slowly and emphatically, shaking a long finger with each word), "_who--owns--that--car_? Careful now."

"Mr. Bartlett, where I live--in Bridgeboro."

"Sure of that?"

"Sure I'm sure; didn't I--"

"Never mind what you did. Now what's this Mr. Bartlett's full name?

Now--_now!_" he added warningly, "just you answer the question I ask you and leave the rest to me. If you tell the truth you won't get in any trouble."

Pee-wee, somewhat awed, at last subsided. "Mr. James Bartlett," he said.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PEE-WEE BEFORE THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE.]