“If we get him started once,” Westy said, “there’ll be an epidemic of scouting up in the Willisville Home. It’s the only kind of an epidemic they haven’t had up there.” I began poking him and shouting, “Wake up, inventor, Skyhigh Sam is waiting to shoot you through his new patented million dollar cannon.” Pretty soon he opened one eye and shut it again. “If he opens it again prop it open,” I said. “Pull on his leg, that’s right.” After a while we brought him to, little by little. I said, “Did you have a good sleep? Sleepy Hollow hasn’t got anything on you. Get up and eat. Don’t you want to go and see Recorder Van Wort? He’s the bandit that takes all the money away from automobile speeders that come here with New York licenses. He lives in a cave in the Court House.” He said, “Where’s my matches?” I said, “Never mind, after this we’re going to have you carry a gasoline torch to light you to bed when you sleep in cotton waste. Stand up and pull your belt down from your neck. Here, pull your jacket down, too. Now you look like the Wayhighman of Willisville. If Skyhigh Sam could see you now he’d go and invent a moving stairway for the equator just for spite. Are you hungry?” He wasn’t exactly hungry, but he drank two cups of coffee and ate three boiled eggs from Tony’s just to show he wasn’t mad. Then he was ready to go after the bandits. “What would they do if we jumped our patrol?” I asked Westy. He said, “You mean parole. I suppose they’d jump after us.” I said, “I wouldn’t jump it. I’d scout pace it if I did anything.” He said, “The _Bridgeboro Record_ will have the whole thing to-night. I bet they have me down as Roy Martin and you as Westy Blakeley. That’s the way they usually do.” The kid said, “Are we going to see that bandit? Has he got a sword?” I said, “You stick to us and maybe you’ll grow up to be a nice train robber.” He said, “We’ll rob mail cars, hey?” “Sure,” I said, “and female cars, too. All kinds, take your pick.” He said, “If we live on that car can I be the captain of it?” I said, “You can be the brakeman. That’s the man that breaks all the windows.” “If Mrs. Carlson, from the Home, comes we’ll take her a prisoner, hey?” he said. Poor little kid, I felt sorry for him because he didn’t seem to think he was ever going back to the Home, and all the while we knew he’d have to. It made us feel kind of mean. I said, “I never started a world war against a Boys’ Home, inventor, but now that we’re friends we’ll stay friends, you can bet.” “Maybe I’ll give you that box of matches,” he said. I said, “Thanks. Give me the book, too, and we’ll start a bonfire.” He said, “We’ll blow up that Court House.” I said, “We’re more likely to get blown up ourselves when we get there if we don’t hustle.” It was about quarter to ten and we were on our way to the Court House. It seemed awful funny to be away from school; there weren’t any fellows around at all. The rest of the scouts in our troop were all in school.