Justice Fee was one of those shrewd, easy-going, stern but good-natured, lawyers that one meets away off in the country. He was altogether removed from that obnoxious thing, the small town lawyer. Up in the edge of his gray hair rested a pair of spectacles, with octagon shaped lenses, almost completely camouflaged by his grizzled locks. These spectacles were seldom where they belonged, on his nose. Apparently he wore them to bed, for after several minutes of knocking by the visitors, he appeared with them on, the while groping for the sleeve of an old coat he had partly donned. He took the callers into a room with a desk in the middle of it and sat down at this, facing them, his legs sticking out through the space in the middle. Then he opened the large book as if making ready to close somebody up in it as one presses a flower. He contemplated Pee-wee with a rather curious frown as he listened to what Ham and then Peter (greatly agitated) had to say. Our young hero, indeed, presented anything but a creditable picture. The old gray sweater used by the man who took care of the furnace in Pee-wee's home, the cap which he held, and his grimy face, made him look like a terrible example of hoodlumism; a trolley-car hoodlum, an apple-stealing and stone-throwing and hooky-playing hoodlum; a hole-in-the-ball-field-fence hoodlum. Nor did the terrible scowl with which he now challenged fate and the world help to make him look like the boy on the cover of the scout manual; the boy that Peter knew and worshipped. "Well now," drawled Peace Justice Fee, casting a tolerant side glance at Pee-wee, "you tell me this whole business and you tell me the _plain truth_. See?" "Sure I will," Pee-wee said; "I'll tell you all my adventures--" "Never mind about your adventures, and watch out, because the first lie you tell--" The justice held up a warning finger. "Now answer me this, never mind anything else; we'll drop a plumb-line right down to the bottom of this thing and have no beating round the bush--" "I beat lots of bushes for rabbits," Pee-wee vociferated. "Well, don't beat any here. Now" (the justice spoke slowly and emphatically, shaking a long finger with each word), "_who--owns--that--car_? Careful now." "Mr. Bartlett, where I live--in Bridgeboro." "Sure of that?" "Sure I'm sure; didn't I--" "Never mind what you did. Now what's this Mr. Bartlett's full name? Now--_now!_" he added warningly, "just you answer the question I ask you and leave the rest to me. If you tell the truth you won't get in any trouble." Pee-wee, somewhat awed, at last subsided. "Mr. James Bartlett," he said. [Illustration: PEE-WEE BEFORE THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE.]