They sat in the car for a few minutes discussing the situation while the goat looked on intently through the woven wire mattress. Abandoning, apparently, all vain hopes of eating the Ford, he had picked up his rusty tin can again, holding its crumpled rusty cover in his mouth while his gaze still lingered on the strangers. “Gee whiz,” said Pee-wee, “I’ll eat anything that comes out of a can but I won’t eat a can.” “Good for you,” said Townsend. He seemed to think it pleasant enough sitting there and for a while appeared to be altogether oblivious to their predicament. “Shall I shin up the gate?” Pee-wee asked again, finally. Townsend glanced idly at the gate. “Might be a good idea,” he said. “Do you think you could do it?” “_Sure_ I could do it. I’ll scan the horizon, hey?” The crossing gates, as is usual, were in two pairs. They were of the customary sort which are lowered to a horizontal position by cogwheels. When not down they stood perfectly upright like four emaciated giant fingers pointing skyward. One of these stood close to the old tower house and was at present the only means (though a rather doubtful means) of access to it. The open framework on which the little edifice stood did not extend out to the edge of it on any side, so that climbing up these supports would avail one nothing. The upright gate, though slender and rather wabbly, was reinforced by iron bars and would doubtless bear the weight of our mighty hero for at least two-thirds of its length. He now proceeded to shinny up this gate and as he ascended toward its thinner end it swayed slightly like the stalk of a lily in the summer breeze. “’Tisn’t going to break, is it?” Townsend called, watching the little scout as he wriggled up. “It seems kind of unsteady.” “_Sure_ it isn’t,” Pee-wee called. “Watch your step,” called Townsend as Pee-wee ascended to a point level with the window. “_Oh, boy!_” shouted Pee-wee, elated and without waiting to transfer himself to the little house. “I can see the road for miles and miles and miles. There’s a village or something about a mile down that way.” “Watch your step,” Townsend warned, as Pee-wee reached out one leg to get a foothold on the old window ledge. CHAPTER XV DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION—AND WAR Perhaps it was Pee-wee’s propensity for going up in the air on all sorts of occasions that enabled him so dextrously to hand himself from the slender, upright gate to the firmer support of the window ledge. Here he sat for a few seconds dangling his feet and surveying the landscape in every direction. “Gee whiz, it’s dandy up here,” he called; “I can see way, way along the track and way down the road, too; it’s a pamerana.” “A which?” Townsend called. “It’s the same as a bird’s-eye view.” “Do you see the village of Idner?”