"Well--don't get scared. Any one would think it was _you_ doing this. Well, as----" "I'm not _scared_, only----" "Wait till you hear, kid; it's good. It was so easy I'm sorry now I didn't go and say good-by to Punkhead; he's got charge of my floor." Skinny's expression seemed to say that he thought it just as well his half-brother had not done that. "After supper I did my little job carrying ice in from the ice-house and dumping it in the box in the outside pantry. Then I went upstairs with the ice-tongs--don't laugh at them, kid, they're simps. At Blythedale Home all those managers need is a mother's care." Skinny was far from laughing at this dreadful recital. "So I put the ice-tongs under my mattress. Then I stayed awake till I heard the church clock in Blythedale ring two. Then I tied the ice-tongs to the cord and dropped it down out of the window and pulled up the grape-vine and tied it good and fast to the shutter hinge. Zip goes the fillum. I wrote on a piece of paper, _Get two hunks of ice to-morrow so you can cool down. So long_. Then I slid down the grape-vine. "I had some stuff I kept from my supper and I got as far as Tonley's Corners before it got light. Then I hid under a lunch wagon that was all boarded up till last night and then I started hiking again. I grubbed some eats and got a hitch with a wop in a flivver--he can't even speak English. So here I am and it's just exactly fifty-one miles from Blythedale Home to Temple Camp and you're looking great, kid. "All I want is that fifteen bucks so I can get a good start. I was thinking I'd bang down to New York and get a job on a ship. But I can't chase around in these blamed calico things, I'll get pinched _sure_. Say, kid, how about that lake; what's on the other side! Could I get through to Catskill that way without going on a road? Hsh--_listen_." "That's only a bird house that kinder creaks in a tree when the wind blows. Collie Edwards put it there; he's a Star Scout." "Didn't you hear voices--men?" "No, it wasn't voices, Danny. Now I'm sorry I bought a scout suit and some things, because I haven't got that money. I only got eleven cents of it now--that's all I got." "You got a suit and things?" Danny asked, aghast. "Yes, because I never had any and they kept saying how I have to have one, because I'm a scout. Honest Danny, I'm sorry." The elder boy sat on the shelf dangling his legs and contemplating his half-brother in a daze. "If you're mad I don't blame you, but it isn't my fault," said Skinny. "Now what am I going to do? _Now_ what in blazes am I going to do?" was all that Danny could say. "Could--maybe you could wear the suit," Skinny ventured. "Then people wouldn't know you got out of a reform school. You can have it if you want it; anyway, it's too big for me. Curry had to laugh at me in it. They don't make them like the shape I am."