aying havoc
among the debris, blowing damp pages over faster than anyone could turn
them. It played among a burned chest of old examination papers.
scattering them like dried leaves. Correct or incorrect, they were all
the same now. Pee-wee liked this roving, unruly wind, having its own way
in that dominion of restriction. He liked its gay disregard of all this
solemn claptrap.

But now he heard clearly the sound of footsteps among the ruins,
footsteps picking their way as it seemed to him, through the uncertain
support of all that various disorder. Groping, careful footfalls.

"Who's there?" he asked. And the only answer was a gust of wind.

Could it be those thieves in search of him? Or might it be the ghost of
some principal or teacher lingering still among these remnants and
reminders of authority?

Step, step--step.

Then from around the corner of a charred, up-ended platform appeared a
face. A face with a cap drawn low over it. And presently a dark form
emerged.

"Who--who are--you?" Pee-wee stammered.

"I'm a teacher as was here," the stranger said. "You needn't be scared
of me, kiddo."

"I was just kind of looking around," Pee-wee explained apologetically.

"Here's a pencil fur yer," the stranger said. "I jes' picked it up."

Pee-wee accepted this as a flag of truce, and felt somewhat reassured. A
man who would give him a pencil surely meant no harm. He had as much
right to be there as Pee-wee had.

"If you were a teacher here I shouldn't think you'd say 'as was,'"
Pee-wee ventured, "But gee whiz," he added, "I don't care how you say
it." No teacher had ever before called him kiddo and he rather liked it.
"Maybe you taught manual training, hey?" Pee-wee said. "Because they're
kind of different."

"There's where you hit it," said the stranger.

"Manual training?"

"Right the first time, and I'm just sort of collecting some of my junk."

"That's one thing about me, I'm good at guessing," Pee-wee said. "I
kinder knew you were that. Manual training, that's my favorite study
because it isn't a study at all. I made a bird-house, I did, in manual
training, a dandy big one."

"Bird-houses is a good thing to make," said the manual training
teacher.

Pee-wee could not see his new acquaintance very well or the bundle which
he carried. If the teacher had been after his junk he seemed to have
been fortunate in finding it, for he had collected a considerable amount
of booty. Indeed, he had but a minute