eedn't go far to prove it," said Ham; "we can see you're not.
Maybe you're pretty wide awake--"

"I'm not, I'm sleepy," Pee-wee shouted. "Have you got anything to say
around here?"

"Well, I _think_ I have, I'm constable," said Ham.

"Then why aren't you sure?" Pee-wee retorted. "Just because I don't
know where I am it doesn't say I don't know what I'm talking about, does
it? Will you help me drive this automobile back? You'll get some money
if you do. I had an adventure with a couple of thieves and I foiled
them; they've got seventy pistols. I was watching The Bandit of
Harrowing Highway--"

"You got into bad company, youngster," said Ham, surveying Pee-wee's
rakish cap and lawless looking sweater. "You ought to be thankful you
got a chance to get rid of that sort o' company. You're kinder young, I
reckon, ain't you? Gosh, I calculate you ain't more'n four foot high.
Kinder young to be mixed up in stealings."

"You're the one that's mixed up," Pee-wee shouted, "and anyway size
doesn't count. You can--you can steal things if you're--you're only a
foot high--if you want to and--"

"How about all this, Peter?" asked his friend confidentially.

"I'll tell you," Pee-wee shouted; "I had a lot of adventures, I know two
men that have, _shh_, they have _dead ones to their credit_! I
circum--what d'you call it--vented them, and that man that just ran
away, he was a traitor, but I can--"

"Can you keep still a second? One look at you is enough," said Ham
Sanders.

"I've--I've got--three scout suits," Pee-wee began.

"Like enough you stole 'em," said Ham. "You're one of them runners for
crooks, that's what you are. I know the kind; they have you to climb in
the windows for 'em and all that. Now you keep still a minute if you
know what's best for you."

In a brief and threatened few moments of silence Peter told in a whisper
how he had seen the signal and read it and stopped the car, and of the
flight of the head thief, as he called him. Between these two excited
youngsters Ham hardly knew what to believe. He certainly did not believe
in talking lights appearing over graveyards. Nor did he credit Pee-wee's
vehement and choppy account of bandits with seventy pistols.

"Whar are these here dead ones?" he asked, rather confused. "Over yonder
in the graveyard?"

"How do I know where they are?" Pee-wee shouted. "Do you know what
blackjacks are?"

"Dots and dashes, you can do it with lights too," said Peter; "they
tell