All of a sudden, Hervey Willetts broke loose. He went sailing into the room with that funny hop, skip and jump he has, and went winding in and out among the tables, and just as he was passing Pee-wee he grabbed him by the hand and began shaking it and saying, “H’lo, Scout Harris, I haven’t seen you in quite a while.” All the while he kept on going and went winding in and out among the tables and out through the door again. But I noticed Pee-wee had something in his hand under the table and I knew it was money. “All right, if you don’t want to wait, I’ll pay him now,” Pee-wee said. “Gee whiz, it doesn’t make any difference to me.” Then I could see from the change he got that Hervey must have passed him a five dollar bill. That was the day he got his allowance from home; he got it every two weeks. I know he must have got it that very day or he wouldn’t have had it all still in his pocket. That was Hervey all over, reckless and careless. Gee, I thought about that a lot later, especially after what happened pretty soon. Because while the four of us were standing outside laughing, he was the one to break loose and go to Pee-wee’s rescue. And he did it in a way so the girl would never know. I heard her say to Pee-wee, “That boy’s just a silly.” But, jiminies, I can see him now the way he went in and out among those tables. He can’t do things like other people, he just _can’t_. Afterwards he told us that was called the Tangled Trail. Gee whiz, little we thought that pretty soon he’d be on a real tangled trail. Little we thought when we were all the time saying, “the plot grows thicker,” how pretty soon it would really grow thicker—for Hervey anyway.... CHAPTER XXVII THE BLACK SHEEP We all went over and watched the dancing a little while and then we started home. Pee-wee’s vamp (that’s what we called her) disappeared forever in the wild and woolly dancing pavilion. Pee-wee never saw her more—that’s what Brent said. “I wonder how the sharpy happened to miss the carnival,” Warde said. “He’ll die of shock when he hears there was dancing there.” “Come on,” Brent said, “we’ve got to hustle.” “It’s early yet,” Hervey said. “Yes, it’ll be early in the morning pretty soon,” Brent said. Hervey just started singing: “Early to bed and early to rise, And you’ll never meet any regular guys.” He should worry. We followed the Greenvale road to where Fox Trail branches out from it to the left. But anyway I guess the left-handed hike was off for that night. We dropped it, and if you pick it up you can have it—we don’t want it.