drift right on account of being almost square. Westy Martin said it was
on the square, all right. He's a crazy kid, that fellow is. Anyway, the
boat didn't have any power. Our scoutmaster, Mr. Ellsworth, said it
didn't even have any will power. We couldn't even pole it.

When we first got it, it was way up a creek in the marshes and Mr.
Donnelle (he's the man that owned it) took us there and showed it to
us. Just as we were coming near it, a fellow jumped out of it and ran
away through the marshes. We said he must be a tramp, because he was
all ragged. Anyway, he acted as if he was scared, that was one sure
thing.

"We should worry about him, anyway," I said; and Mr. Donnelle said he
was gone and that was the end of him.

But, believe me, that wasn't the end of him. That was only the
beginning of him. I didn't say anything more about him before, because
I didn't know, but believe me, that fellow was--what do you call it--
you know--_destined_--to cause a lot of trouble in our young lives.
That sounds like a regular author, hey? _Destined_.

When we began fixing the boat up, we found that one of the lockers was
locked with a padlock and as long as the boat didn't belong to us, we
didn't break it open, especially because there were plenty of lockers
besides that one. I bet you'd like to know what was in that locker. But
you're not going to find that out yet, so there's no use asking. All
the time we thought Mr. Donnelle had the key to it. But, oh, just you
wait.

Well, after we got it all fixed up, we couldn't decide how we'd get it