"Whatcher goin' to do?"
"We'll have to go and see Old Man Stanton," Tom said, "then if we don't get pinched we'll start north."
Mr. Flint looked at him in astonishment.
"I wouldn't say we've done any damage," said Tom in his stolid way, "and I believe in that about any port in a storm. But if he's the kind of a man who would think different, then we've got to go and tell him, that's all. We can pay him for the stanchions we chopped up."
"Wall, you're a crazy youngster, that's all, but if yer sot on huntin' fer trouble, yer got only yerself to blame. Ye'll go before a justice uv the peace, the whole three uv year, and be fined ten dollars apiece, likely as not, an' I don't believe ye've got twenty-five dollars between the lot uv yer."
"Right you are," said Roy. "We are poor but honest, and we spurn—don't we, Pee-wee?"
"Sure we do," agreed Pee-wee.
"Poverty is no disgrace," said Roy dramatically.
The man, though not overburdened with a sense of humor, could not help smiling at Roy and he went away laughing, but scarcely crediting their purpose to venture into the den of "Old Man Stanton." "They're a queer lot," he said to himself.
Within a few minutes the boys had gathered up their belongings, repacked their duffel bags and were picking their way across the marsh toward the drier road.