the dickens are you doing here, you old Calamity Jane? The last time we had the bad luck to run into you and your traveling kindergarten you were in hard luck—no scoutmaster, no friends,——”

“Oh, we’re rolling in wealth now,” Brent said; “I mean we’re rolling in our flivver—latest model, self-stopper and everything. We don’t speak to common scouts like you any more. We’re on a trip—a series of trips—we left Newburgh this morning, and we’ve had four trips so far. I hope we don’t get tripped again. Remember how we were out for adventure? Well, now we have it. If you want adventure, get a flivver.”

“Where are you going?” Harry asked him.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” he said. “Can’t you see we’re not going. The only kind of treatment we haven’t given this machine is asperin. Anybody got an asperin tablet? We won this machine for putting out a fire in Newburgh. We had it wished on us. I’m sorry we put the fire out—it was a nice fire.”

not

I said, “Brent, you crazy Indian, you sound just the same as last year. You haven’t changed a bit.”

“I couldn’t even change a dollar,” he said.

“Well, this is some streak of luck anyway,” Harry said. “We’ve got a 1920 Cadillac stalled down in the village. We’re on our way to search for buried treasure—up near Lake Ontario. We think we’ve got a clew to a couple of bags of gold. Want to join us? At present, we’re starving. You haven’t got such a thing as a cheese sandwich loafing around, have you?”

“The last cheese sandwich I saw was on its way down little Bill’s throat,” he said, “but we have some cold corned beef, and crackers and rye bread, and a few other odds and ends that you’re welcome to. What do you say we make a camp?”

So we all went into the woods and got a fire started just for old time’s sake, and sprawled around it and had some eats. Believe me, it seemed good to be with those fellows again. Brent said that wherever we went, they would go too. He said they were on a vacation and they didn’t care what happened to them. He said that if he could only make one stab for buried treasure, he would feel that he hadn’t lived in vain. That was always the way he talked—crazy like.

me

CHAPTER XII—WE GET THE CAR STARTED

We spent about an hour in the woods near the road, sitting around 

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