Gee whiz, I don’t know what I would have done if my father had insisted on my telling all about it. What would you have done? If there are two scout laws and you have to break one in order to obey the other, what can you do about it? There’s a sticker for you.
But, anyway, one good thing, my father has a lot of respect for Mr. Ellsworth. And when he saw how Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Martin stood, oh, boy, he was with us. But, gee whiz, I felt sorry for my mother on account of her having a convict for a son. She cried and hugged me and everything when we started away, and my sister made a big fuss, too. That was because I had never been a convict before.
Now I’ll tell you what I think. I don’t how much Mr. Ellsworth knew, and I don’t know how much Mr. Martin knew, but they knew something about Charlie Slausen. I mean they knew what kind of a fellow he was. Maybe they thought he had something to do with the fire, and maybe they thought the facts would come out. I don’t know what they thought. All I know is what happened.
Down at the station we were held for a hearing the next day. They didn’t keep us there, but they patrolled us or paroled us or whatever you call it, in the custody of our parents. We agreed that we wouldn’t run away. Gee whiz, why should we run away? There’s plenty of fun in Bridgeboro.
As soon as Westy and I were alone together I said, “What are we going to do? We have to tell when the case comes up. We can’t refuse to tell the judge what we were there for.”
He said, “Maybe it would be all right for us to say we saw Charlie Slausen there. We needn’t say what we went there for.”
“Then they’ll say he set fire to the place,” I said, “and I don’t believe he did. Just because everybody always thinks the worst about him, that isn’t saying that he’d do a thing like that, he’s always needing money, that fellow is, and right away they’ll say he started the fire maybe to get the insurance on his car.”
“He doesn’t own it,” Westy said.
“Maybe he does,” I told him. “How do we know? I’m not going to tell anybody he was there unless I have to. Let them find it out.”
“We’ll have to tell everything to-morrow,” Westy said.