“Wait nothing,” Brent said, all the while laughing.

I said, “I think it means that Harry’s people were bringing the stuff home in the car from somewhere, maybe, and forgot to take it out; that’s what I think. If the rest of them are as careless and happy-go-lucky as he is, that’s probably what happened.”

“He isn’t careless and happy-go-lucky,” Skinny piped up. He was half asleep under the big buffalo robe, and his voice sounded awful funny, as if he were talking in his sleep.

isn’t

“Maybe Harry stole them,” I said.

Good night, off went the buffalo robe and Skinny sat up like a jack-in-the-box. “He didn’t!” he shouted.

Good night

didn’t

I guess we were all too tired and sleepy to think much about those things that Pee-wee had discovered. Pretty soon our young hero was sprawling on the floor of the car, dead to the world and Skinny was sound asleep on the front seat under the buffalo robe. Grove and I stayed awake, but we didn’t talk much.

It was nearly four o’clock in the morning when we got to Utica and we stopped at a hotel where there were sheds for automobiles. Oh, boy, weren’t we some sleepy bunch! Brent ran the car under one of the sheds and then we all staggered into the hotel. While we were waiting for our rooms, along came the Ford with Harry and Brent’s patrol. They could hardly stand up, they were so sleepy.

He was an awful nice fellow, that hotel man was. He said he didn’t know where he could put eleven people, but he guessed as long as we were scouts, we wouldn’t mind bunking up. So he gave us three rooms and I had Pee-wee and Skinny wished onto me.

The clerk said, “When would you like to be called?”

“Calling won’t do any good,” Harry said; “you’ll have to scream. I think we’ll wake up about ten o’clock to-morrow morning.”

“It’s to-morrow morning already,” I told him; “everything is all mixed up; we’ll have to have lunch for breakfast; we should worry.”

But anyway, I woke up earlier than I thought I would—that was about nine o’clock. Pee-wee woke up while I was getting dressed, and we decided that we’d go out and take a little walk around the city. We went out very quiet, so as not to disturb 

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