“How do I know?” I said. “Maybe he dropped a match or something. But he isn’t so bad that he’d burn the place down on purpose, I know that. I’d like to know what your father and Mr. Ellsworth think. I bet they think he did it. I bet the reason they were willing for us not to talk to-day was because they think that if nobody says anything yet, they can prove something against him. Hey? I bet they’ve got some plans for to-morrow.” “What are we going to do this afternoon?” Westy wanted to know. “I’m going to help clear away the stuff,” I told him. “Good idea,” he said. “Let’s round up all the troop.” We called up most of the fellows and we went to see those who didn’t have ’phones, and we fixed it up to all go up to Willow Place in the afternoon and help. That was some afternoon. The wreckage of the shop was all over the sidewalk and the place looked like Thanksgiving dinner when Pee-wee Harris gets through with it. We started helping the men to haul boards and stuff, and parts of cars, away from the walk, and raking out the middle of the streets so as not to leave any nails and broken window glass for autos to run over. We might better be doing that than be out hiking in the woods, that’s what I told them. About the middle of the afternoon Charlie Slausen came over. He seemed awful worried, kind of. He called Westy and me aside and asked us if we had told anybody about the night before. I said, “No, we haven’t. We got away with it so far, lucky for us, but when the judge starts asking us questions to-morrow, we’ll have to tell. We can’t lie to him. If they ask us if we saw anybody at the shop we’ll have to say we did, and they can make us tell everything that happened if they want to.” He said, “You didn’t tell them anything about seeing me?” “No,” I told him, “because I thought they’d start thinking you set fire to the place and we know you didn’t.” “My father thinks you did,” he said. “Let him think so,” I told him; “we should worry. All I’m afraid of is that they’ll make us tell about meeting you here, and then they’ll say it’s funny you didn’t come out right away after the fire and say so yourself. We’ve got things fixed till to-morrow, but everything will come out then.” He said, “You kids are a couple of bully little scouts. Come over here; I want to talk to you.” “I don’t mind,” I said. CHAPTER XX—A PROMISE The rest of the scouts in the troop were working away, getting the street cleaned, and I guess they didn’t notice us. We went back across the field to our old railroad car, and I said, “Come ahead in; nobody’ll bother us in here.”