"Do you want me to let you into a secret?" Pee-wee said. "I know where there's a stolen automobile. Maybe you'd like to help me take it back to its owner, hey? If you do you'll get an honourable mention in our troop-book. I was carried away in it by two thieves who didn't know I was in the car, because I was disguised, sort of, under the buffalo robe. Do you want to help me foil them?" The manual training teacher seemed interested but a bit incredulous. He looked Pee-wee over and said, "what's all this?" "Maybe you don't believe me but it's true," Pee-wee said. "Do you know how to run a car?" "Anything from a flivver up," said the stranger. "Shh," said Pee-wee, "this one is away, way up. It's a super six Hunkajunk, it belongs to a man where I live, in Bridgeboro, New Jersey." "Well, what are you doing here?" the manual training teacher asked. "I was kind of kidnapped accidentally. They did it but they didn't know it. They've got pistols and blackjacks and things and I heard them talk about stealing. I bet I'd have heard a lot more only my head was under the buffalo robe. If you'll help me we can circum--what do you call it--you know--circum--" The teacher did not know. But his interest was aroused at this whispered tale of armed bandits and of a big stolen car. Pee-wee completed the tale in breathless excitement. He told all, from the beginning. "They locked it in," he concluded, "and went away; but one of the doors, the big one, was locked on the inside and I opened it. Anybody can take the car out. Those men have gone away across the lake. If you'll drive it to Bridgeboro you can stay at my house and have breakfast and I'll tell Mr. Bartlett that you helped me, and gee whiz, they'll thank you a lot. Maybe you know about scouts because manual training teachers know a lot about scouts on account of scouts making bird-houses and all things like that, and so maybe you know about good turns. That'll be a peach of a good turn. And if I tell about it you'll get a kind of a medal from our troop with your name on it. What's your name? Mine's Walter Harris, but the fellows in my troop call me Pee-wee, but I should worry about them. Will you help me? What's your name?" "Mr. Swiper," said the stranger, rather thoughtfully; "let's go and look it over." He was certainly considering the proposition and Pee-wee accompanied him back to the lake, keeping up a running fire of enthusiastic encouragement and representing to him the delight and self-satisfaction of circumventing a pair of scoundrels. "They've got pistols and everything," he said as a clincher, "and if they'd steal a car they'd kill somebody, wouldn't they?" "Seventy pistols is a good many," said Mr. Swiper, incredulously.