before, on account of what we knew had happened in it. And I just couldn’t stop thinking about that.

“Do you know what I think?” I said, all the while looking around. “I think there’s a lot more about this car, too. I think it must have been in a wreck once; look at those shutters.”

There were about half a dozen shutters that we hadn’t been able to pull down, but the men had done it for us, and now I could see why it was they had stuck so. It was because they were all smashed and knocked out of shape. And besides that there was a long board fitted into the side of the car that hadn’t always been there, because it was soft wood, not like the regular wood of the car.

“What shall we do about it?” Pee-wee asked me.

“Nothing, as far as I can see,” I told him. “I don’t see that there’s anything to fathom. I’ll paste the letter in the troop-book, after we’ve shown it to the fellows.”

fathom

Pee-wee looked terribly disappointed. I guess he had a wild idea that that robber was still beating it and that we could catch him if we hurried up. He seemed to think that he was on the trail of something or other.

That night we had our first troop meeting in the old car, and Mr. Ellsworth read the letter to all the fellows. He said it was very interesting to hear these shots out of the past (that was the way he said it), and how we could always think of our quaint meeting-place, as the scene of a truly remarkable adventure of days gone by. He uses dandy big words, Mr. Ellsworth does.

Then the troop settled down to making plans for going up to Temple Camp, because that’s where we always go in vacation. Poor Pee-wee and his letter had to take a back seat. Mr. Ellsworth said that after all, up-to-date adventures are better than old stale ones, and that we should worry about pirates boarding ships and robbers stopping trains and shooting and things like that, that happened a long while ago. He said that, because he’s down on the movies, especially Wild West stuff, and he’s always trying to keep us thinking about scouting. I’ve got his number, all right.

But, anyway, Pee-wee wouldn’t let me paste that old letter in our troop-book. He just hung on to it. I don’t know what he was thinking about, but I guess he had an idea that something would be revealed. That’s his favorite word—revealed.

revealed

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