Our leader laughed.
“Well, bring out your birthday book and we’ll autograph it.”
“It’s in my office,” the old man waggled. “Jest come this way an’ I’ll show you whar ’tis. You [[140]]kin be a-signin’ it while I put your boat through the lock.”
Well, we never suspected a trap. Unfamiliar with the duties of a lock tender it never occurred to us that there was anything queer or irregular in the old man’s request of our signatures in his book. At his direction we cheerfully followed him into the house that he occupied on the canal bank and up a flight of stairs to a sort of attic bedroom.
“If you go over thar,” our stoop-shouldered conductor pointed, indicating a table near the room’s only window, “you’ll find the book an’ a pen.”
Peg was the first one to reach the table.
“I can’t find a book with names in it,” he grumbled, feeling around among the table’s contents.
Scoop looked over his shoulder to make sure that our conductor had gone downstairs.
“Maybe,” he laughed softly, tapping his head, “the old gent’s cuckoo.”
Red wiped his sweaty face on his shirt sleeve.