First Mr. Donnelle showed us through it and it was dandy, only in very poor shape. Its shape was square. But I wouldn’t laugh at it because we had a lot of fun on it. Inside it had two rooms and a little kitchen and the roof had a railing around it and there was lots of room there. There was lots of room on the deck too. And there was a kind of little guard-house, too, to put Pee-wee in if he didn’t behave. Some of the windows were broken, but I knew we could fix them easily. All we needed to do was eat some green apples and then we’d have plenty of panes. There were some lockers too, only one of them was locked and we couldn’t get into it. I guess the tramp didn’t take anything, because there was nothing missing. I guess all he took was a look around. There were some cushions piled on one of the lockers and they looked as if someone had been sleeping on them. Pee-wee said he could see the oil stove had been used by the smell—he’s got such sharp eyes that he can see a smell. I told him he had a classy eye because there was a pupil in it, and you ought to have seen Mr. Donnelle laugh. I guess he thought we were crazy. “Well we should worry about the tramp,” I said, “especially now that we have a boat like this. The next thing to do is to bring the whole troop and get her fixed up.” One thing was easy anyway. Just below Bridgeboro, where we live, there is a kind of a branch flowing into the Bridgeboro River. We always called it the creek. Now we found out from Mr. Donnelle that it started along up above Little Valley. Over there they call it Dutch Creek. He said that at high tide we could float the houseboat right down into Bridgeboro River and then wait for the up tide or else tow it up to Bridgeboro. Cracky, I could see it would be a cinch and I was glad because we fellows didn’t have money enough to have the boat carted by land. But, _good night_, this way was easy. The next morning I sent a birch bark call to all the fellows in our troop. I sent them each a little piece of birch bark by courier. Connie Bennett, he’s our courier. And that meant come to Special Meeting—W. S. W. S. means without scoutmaster. So pretty soon they began coming up to Camp Solitaire. That’s the name I gave the tent I have on our lawn. When they were all there, I told them about Mr. Donnelle and the houseboat, and we decided that we’d hike over to Little Valley and pile right in and get it ready instead of bringing it to Bridgeboro first. We decided that if we worked on it for about three days, it would be ready. So we all started to hike it along the road to Little Valley. We had an adventure before we got there, and I guess I’d better tell you about it. I made a map too, so you can see the way everything was. It’s about five miles to Little Valley by the road.