Then Mr. Ellsworth came over to us, smiling all over his face. “Well, boys,” he said, “I’m glad to say that our spy quest has gone up in smoke. Mr. Donnelle is one of the best known authors of America. He is writing a story of the war and our _dark_ memorandum is just a little literary note of his about a spy among the American forces. I think we shall find it a most interesting story when it is finished. It is full of German intrigue and you will be glad to know that the imaginary spy is caught and court-martialled. You have done a fine thing by your discovery, for Mr. Donnelle has become greatly interested in the Scouts, and especially in our young scout author.” Then he gave me a funny look. “So you see our _dark_ memorandum was not so dark after all.” “G-o-o-d night!” I said; “it was a kind of a pale white.” “And I dare say,” Mr. Ellsworth said, all the while slapping me on the shoulder, “that our deep-dyed villain is going to prove a very good friend.” “Even if you’re deep-dyed,” said Pee-wee, “sometimes the colors will run and you won’t be so deep-dyed after all. My sister had a skirt and she dyed it a deep——” Honest, that kid is a scream. CHAPTER IV THE PLOT GROWS THINNER—OR ELSE THICKER Pee-wee says it grows thicker and I say it grows thinner, so I put it both ways. I told him things would begin to stir up in this chapter and he said a thing always gets thicker when you stir it. I should worry. “Suppose we should go boating or something like that where there’s a lot of water,” I told him; “that would thin it some if you added water, wouldn’t it?” “You’re crazy,” he shouted. Westy Martin wanted to name it The Deep Dyed Villain—so you can call it that if you want to—I don’t care. Now I’ll start off. You remember about Mr. Donnelle saying that he had a wireless. Well, pretty soon after what I’ve been telling you about, the men went away and they were all laughing and good-natured about it. I heard one of them say that the Boy Scouts were a wide-awake lot. Believe me, they wouldn’t say that if they saw us sleeping after a day’s hike at Temple Camp, If you heard Vic Norris snore, you’d think it was the West Front in France. Well anyway, Mr. Donnelle wanted Pee-wee and me to stay at his house a little while, because he said he was kind of interested in us. He would listen to Pee-wee very sober like and then begin to laugh. And whenever Pee-wee tried to explain, it only made him laugh more. “Anyway, I could see you weren’t a very bad kind of a spy,” Pee-wee said. Jiminety! I had to laugh. Well, Mr. Donnelle asked us all about the Scouts and we told him all about them—Pee-wee mostly did that. He’s a scout propaganderlet—that’s a small sized propagandist. We told him how we didn’t know how we are going to manage to get up to Temple Camp in our launch, because it would only hold about seven or eight boys and we had twenty-four, not counting Captain Kidd, the parrot.