e down on them
and . . .

_Plunk_! The pioneer scout had collided with a man on the sidewalk and
he returned to Bridgeboro with a suddenness that surprised even himself.

"Excuse me," he said.

"Certainly," said the man.

Pee-wee recovered his rock, and began kicking it along the sidewalk
again. "I'll show them," he said moodily.

He was about to ascend his scout throne again and engage in the
gracious pastime of receiving delegations of common, ordinary scouts in
his dim, wooded domain when he found himself at the edge of a region
which was not in the least like the romantic wilderness of his vision.
This was Barrel Alley, the habitat of Jimmy Mattenburg and Sweet
Caporal and the McNulty twins.

Barrel Alley was the slum neighborhood of Bridgeboro and it was not
very large. But it was large enough. Pee-wee explored the crooked,
muddy, sordid street, gazing wistfully here and there for possible
recruits. But no human material was to be seen. The older boys were
playing craps in Dennahan's lot and the smaller boys were watching
them. One lonely sentinel was perched on the fence scanning the
horizon for cops. For this he received the regular union pay of a
stale apple-core.

He was an unkempt urchin with an aggressive and challenging
countenance, but he had solved several problems in economy. One of
these was the entire elimination of stockings and garters. This was
accomplished by the use of a pair of trousers with legs of such ample
diameter and of such length as to render stockings altogether
superfluous. This released both garters for more important duties,
they being tied end to end, thus constituting a sort of single strand
suspender which at its junction with his trousers in front was securely
held by a large nail. His hair presented an appearance not unlike the
negligent architecture of an eagle's nest, which is of the bungalow
type in its loose irregularity. He had not the slightest reason for
supposing that Pee-wee was equipped with commissary stores, but on
general principles he said,

"Give us a hunk of candy, will yer?"

As luck would have it, this random shot, fired at every strange boy
from the upper world, hit the mark, to his unspeakable astonishment.
Pulling out of his pocket a licorice jaw-breaker of vast dimensions,
Pee-wee sent it shooting in a bee-line at the face of the stranger.

Never before in all his checkered history had Keekie Joe ever received
any edible of any ch