“Cigarette Sam and his Famous Fire,” I said. “You’ve got Skyhigh beaten twenty ways. You’re a _real_ hero. Come on, let’s go get something to eat. Do you know how to eat? Never mind the matches. We’ll send a couple of men down here with a wagon to get them.” “Do I have to go back?” the poor little kid wanted to know. “You stick to us,” I said. “We’ve got a wild, savage railroad car that has never been tamed. You were in it last night. Did I guess right? That railroad car has had more adventures than all Skyhigh’s submarines and airships put together. That car can’t be kept in a domestic state. It can’t even be kept in the state of New Jersey. If you want real adventures come with us. Only I tell you beforehand it’s a wild life. Now what do you say?” Gee whiz, the poor kid looked at me as if he thought I was crazy. Maybe I am, but what’s the difference? You can have a lot of fun when you’re crazy. CHAPTER XXIII—ADVENTURES OF CIGARETTE SAM The poor kid was willing to go with us because I guess he thought we were a couple of wild adventurers. As soon as he saw we were all right and believed in pirates and highwaymen and things, he was with us. He saw we were strong for the SKYHIGH SAM SERIES too, and so he knew it would be all right to trust us. I told him that he was even greater than Skyhigh Sam. That wasn’t saying much, but he thought it was. On the way up and after we got to the car we found out all about the poor little duffer. He said he had started out from the Boys’ Home up in Willisville. He said that some people had sent a lot of books there for the kids, and that was how Skyhigh Sam got into the Boys’ Home. It’s too bad they didn’t keep him there. That poor kid sneaked out one night and started off to conquer the world with fifty cents a lady gave him. He had Skyhigh Sam with him. Then he bought four packs of cigarettes and a big box of matches. He picked up a cigar in the street, too. He walked to Bridgeboro in the night and nobody stopped him. He didn’t know where he was going, but anyway he was going to invent a submarine. After that he was going to sell it to the government—that’s what he told us. That first night he crawled through a place where one of the boards was broken under Tony’s Lunch Wagon. He said he was pretty hungry. That’s just like great inventors. He said there were all toadstools under the wagon. Maybe if he had been a scout he would have known that the kind under there were good to eat. Even raw they’re better than nothing. But anyway he didn’t eat any. And he was good and hungry. He could hear people above him in the wagon, and he knew they were eating. I guess he saw it was a hard life starting out to be an inventor.