He said, “Shh. Can I count on you never to breathe a word? The man I got these clothes from lies dead in yonder swamp.” “Who put him there?” Pee-wee wanted to know. Brent said, “Shh, I did. The man was innocent. He was standing in a field beyond the swamp. He was doing no harm. I approached him, crawling through the grass.” “What was he doing there?” Pee-wee wanted to know. “He was scaring away crows,” Brent said. “_He was a scarecrow_!” I blurted out. “A harmless, innocent, hard working scarecrow,” Brent said. “As I think of it now——” [Illustration: BRENT CAPTURED A SCARECROW.] “You make me tired!” Pee-wee yelled. “Why didn’t you say so?” Brent said, “His trustful, happy, carefree face haunts me now. He was only scaring away the crows——” “You give me a pain!” the kid shouted. “You’re crazy.” Brent said, “But I thought of my dungeon in the Jolly & Kidder van and of my brutal keepers, those two boy scouts—asleep on the back step. I said to myself, ‘I will never return whither——’” “You mean thither,” Pee-wee said. “I said to myself, ‘They will have to kill me to take me alive,’” Brent said. “Anyway, you killed him?” I asked him. He said, “I killed him in cold blood—anyway it wasn’t more than lukewarm. I tore him to pieces and took his clothes and concealed my telltale convict stripes under a weeping willow. It was weeping its eyes out.” “It’s a wonder it wasn’t laughing,” I told him. He said, “The poor fellow was as thin as a stick; his arms were made of a cross stick, I think it was a broom stick. He lies under the marsh grass in yonder swamp. And I am free!” “You’re crazy too,” the kid shouted. “I said I would escape and I did,” Brent began to laugh. “I decided that I would escape from the very people who claim to be the most alert and wide-awake—the boy scouts. You say I’m crazy. Very well, even a crazy person can foil the boy scouts. I suppose that’s what you call logic.” “That’s what you call nonsense,” Pee-wee yelled. “I hope you boys had a good nap while I was escaping,” Brent said. “It was a shame to do it, it was so easy. I tried to leave good plain footprints, I did all that an honest convict could to help you, but in vain. I doubt if the boy scouts could trail a steam roller. As for the authorities of Barrow’s Homestead ... but I’ve seen enough of crime and its evil results.” That’s just the way he talked. “Henceforth I mean to be honest.” “You’re a nut, that’s what you are!” Pee-wee shouted. Brent said, awful kind of heroic like, he said, “Ha! Sayest thou so? Then glance at this paper.” I said, “What is it? Where did you get it?” “I got it out of the inside pocket of this old coat,” he said; “and it means mischief. _Shh_, no one has seen it but Harry Domicile; he agrees with me that it has to do with a dark plot.” “You mean you found it in the scarecrow’s pocket?” Pee-wee asked him, all excited.