“A scout is supposed to be polite,” said Townsend soberly. “You forgot to turn the car around where we camped up on the hill,” said Pee-wee in thunderous accusation. “You forgot to turn the car around and you thought we were going down the other side of the hill instead of back the same way we came from. You forget that we went up the hill backwards. _Haaah, haaaah!_” “Kiddo,” said Townsend, “a scout is supposed to be polite. Last night when I lay awake listening to the rain, I happened to remember that I never thanked—” “You make me tired!” yelled Pee-wee. CHAPTER XIV UP IN THE AIR After backing up the hill a second time, Townsend turned the car and coasted down the long grade on the other side. The momentum took them to a point where a railroad track crossed the road; indeed, the car would have gone farther than that if caution had not required Townsend to stop on hearing the whistle of a locomotive. Presently a train went whizzing past. The place at which they now were was apparently the site of a deserted village, which in its flourishing day had boasted of a set of railroad gates and a little tower house for a gateman and switchman. The four gates were standing stark upright now and they did not so much as bow when the train went by. A ladder which had probably been the means of access to the tower house lay below it, broken and rotted, one of its uprights entirely gone, while three or four rungs stuck out from the other one like the few remaining teeth of some aged crone. It looked more like a giant, dilapidated rake than a ladder. The tower house stood quite high upon a rotting trestle. Its roof was almost entirely bereft of shingles. There was no sign of glass in either of its windows which commanded views north and south along the track. How long it may have been since any solitary watcher stayed in that aerial shack, one could not guess. For a shack that held itself so high it was very shabby. Through one of the windows the boys could see a tall lever standing at an angle; whether it was a switch lever or the gate lever they could not say. It was red with rust. A few small houses clustered about the spot but they seemed all to be forsaken and falling to pieces, save one. This one was surrounded by a picturesque fence ingeniously devised of laths, old bed springs, chicken wire, grocery boxes and barrel staves. In front of the house was a very small and shabby porch and upon this sat an Italian woman of enormous dimensions. It was impossible to determine what she was sitting on for no part of this was visible, but undoubtedly she was sitting on something, for she was in a sitting posture.