When I came back I said, “It’s about that money of yours—that two
hundred dollars that we found in the locker of the house-boat. It made a
lot of trouble in Temple Camp, that’s one sure thing. Don’t you remember
how you said that you’d tell me all about how you got it, some day?”
He said, “Oh that; that wasn’t an adventure; that was just an episode.”
“I know what episodes are all right,” I told him; “didn’t my father have
a couple of them. If there’s a narrow escape, that’s a sign it’s not an
episode; it’s an adventure. You can have episodes any day.
“Well, there wasn’t a very narrow escape to that one, anyhow,” he said,
laughing all the while; “it was about six feet wide, I guess. But here
goes, if you want it. Gather closer around the fire, because this
adventure is mighty wet.”
“That’s a sure sign it’s an adventure,” I told him, “because how can an
episode get wet?”
“I guess you’re right,” he said; “it might get a little damp, but not
really wet. Anyway, do you think you can keep still for about ten
minutes?”
CHAPTER XIV
BUT I DIDN’T WRITE IT
The reason I said that about the two hundred dollars causing a lot of
trouble at Temple Camp was, because a little fellow there named Skinny
McCord (you’ll see him after a while) was suspected of stealing it. A
lot of fellows thought he took it from a fellow while he was saving the
fellow from drowning and then hid it in the house-boat. They thought
_that_ just because he went to the house-boat, and because they found
out that he had a key to the locker. But all the while that money
belonged to Harry Donnelle and he came up to Temple Camp and claimed it,
after I wrote and told him all about Skinny. That’s how he happened to
visit Temple Camp and you can bet I’m glad he did. Anyway, that’s all
part of another story, and maybe you read it.
Now part of the story that Harry Donnelle told us, I knew already, but
the other fellows didn’t, because I never told them how I had met him
before. So this is the story just the way he told it to us that night,
because afterward I got him to write it out for our hike record. And the
reason I put it in here is, because it has something to do with the
story that comes after this. So here it is, and oh boy, didn’t we listen
as we sat around that camp-fire in Mr. Hasbrook’s orchard. That’s where
stories are best—around the camp-fire.
HARRY DONNELLE’S YARN
Well, messmates, when my father told you that you could have the old
house-boat for the summer, you never knew he had a son in the army, now,
did you? But just the same, little Harry was trotting around in Camp
Dix, all dolled up in his lieutenant’s uniform, waiting to be mustered
out. Little Harry had just come home from France where he had been mixed
up in the big—_episode_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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