"We wouldn't take anything that didn't belong to us," Connie said; "you'll have to give it to us if you want us to take it." "I don't care so much about having one, anyway," I said. I guess that man thought we were crazy. "We'll give you the run," he said. "I wouldn't blame you for doing that if we took the switch," Wig told him. Gee, he had to laugh. Pretty soon the man who was far ahead began swinging his lantern around in a circle. Then the engine gave a kind of a quick, shrill whistle, and we started again. We went a little faster than before and then, all of a sudden, we saw the engine standing quite a way off, and already the men on our car were turning the hand brakes. Our car was rattling along all by itself. In about half a minute, _kerlick, kerlick_, it went on a switch and then the men began yanking on the brake handles for all they were worth. But I knew that old car all right, and its brakes were pretty near as bad as its couplings. "Oh, merrily, merrily on we roll," Connie began singing. "What's the matter with this plaguey old boat?" one of the men said, all the while bracing his feet and pulling and pulling on the wheel. "It likes to go off on a hike by itself," I said; "you should worry. When it stops, it stops." "Well, it better stop pretty soon," he said, "or else----Here, get hold of this wheel, you kids, and pull." "Them brakes got about as much bite in 'em as a ki-oodle," the man said; "how old is this old scow? 'Bout a hundred, I guess." "This old car is all right," I told him; "a scout must have respect for age--page something-or-other-scout handbook. We may be old ourselves some day. What do we care, yo ho?" He said, "Well, I hope the brakes on your tongue will work better than they do now." "The pleasure is mine," I told him. Two of us were pulling away as hard as we could, helping one of the trainmen, two were helping the man on the other platform, and Pee-wee was sleeping peacefully inside with his head on the floor and one of his legs sprawled up over the seat. As well as I could see, we were rolling merrily along a track that branched away from the main track. I thought that, because I couldn't see the full blaze of the engine's headlight any more, and I knew we were verging away from the railroad. "Talk about prodigal sons," Westy said; "when this old car gets back home, they ought to kill the fatted calf for it." "Good night," I told him; "if the fatted calf gets on the track, he'll be killed all right." "Oh, boys, where do we go from here?" Wig began singing. But those trainmen didn't seem to think it was much of a joke. All of a sudden, we went rattling through an opening in a fence and I saw a couple of big white things near us. "They're tents," Westy said. By now the car was slowing down and pretty soon it stopped right in front of a big dark thing--a kind of a building. If we'd have gone fifty feet more, we'd have bunked our nose right into it.