Westy and I got the shed window open, all right, because Jimmy wasn’t careful about it, on account of not having anything worth stealing, I suppose. I was kind of shaky when we went into the first room, because that was where he slept and I thought maybe he’d be lying there dead. But he wasn’t there at all. Just the same we stood there looking at each other, and we were both kind of nervous, because Jimmy’s clothes were lying all around on the bed and on the floor, and a chair was knocked over, and it looked just as if somebody had been rummaging in the room in a big hurry. The door into the other room was closed and, I have to admit, I didn’t feel like opening it. “I bet somebody’s robbed him and killed him,” Westy said, kind of low. “That’s just what _I’m_ thinking,” I said, “and when we open that door we’ll see him lying on the floor dead, hey?” “Anyway, we have to open it,” he said. “I’ll open it if you don’t want to,” I told him. But, anyway, neither of us opened it. We just stood there and I felt awful funny. It was all still and spooky and I could hear the clock ticking, and I counted the ticks. It sounded spooky, going tick, tick, tick. Then Westy said, “Shall I open it?” “Sure,” I said, “we’ve got to sometime.” So he opened it just a little bit and then, all of a sudden, he pushed it wide open and we looked into that other room. CHAPTER XXX GONE In the middle of the room was a table Jimmy always ate his meals at, and on that table was a big square piece of paper and there was a big envelope on the floor. But there wasn’t any sign of Jimmy. Oh, boy, didn’t I feel good on account of that. Westy read the paper out loud and it was something about a convention of the Grand Army, or something like that. It said how all the members of some post or other were asked to go to Saratoga on account of that big convention and it was addressed to “Comrade James Van Dorian.” Gee, I felt awful sorry for him, sort of, because I knew how it was with him. “He just couldn’t help it,” Westy said, “he got ready in a hurry and went. I guess he took all the money he had saved up—poor old Jimmy.” “He’ll lose his job, that’s sure,” I said. Even while we were standing there I could kind of see him getting dressed up in a hurry in that old blue coat he had, with the buttons all falling off it, and starting off with his crutch. Maybe he just got his pension money, hey? All the while the whistle on the tug was blowing and I was afraid people would come around and maybe they’d all be on the side of the tugboat man and be mad at Uncle Jimmy. Jiminy, I wasn’t mad at him, anyway. And I could hear that old man shouting about all the things he was going to do and about the bridgeman deserting and leaving him in the mud. “Hurry up,” Westy said, “let’s find the key-bar and we’ll open it for him; we can do it all right.”