straggling cottages thereabout had put out their lights and retired to
slumber before that wicked hour.

There was a stillness and gloom about these uninviting, dark houses; a
cheerlessness not to be found in the densest woods. They made Pee-wee
feel lost and lonesome, as the dim, silent wilderness could never do.

Soon he reached the town, and there in the center of a spacious lawn was
something which, in his loneliness and uncertainty, seemed the picture
of gloom. The ruin of a building which had been burned to the ground.
What a fire that must have been to witness! Better far than The Bandit
of Harrowing Highway! Over a partly fallen arch, under which many
reluctant feet had passed, Pee-wee could just make out the graven words:
WEST KETCHEM PUBLIC SCHOOL.

West Ketchem. So that was where he was. But he had never heard of West
Ketchem. The fame of this lakeside metropolis had not penetrated to
surging Bridgeboro. At least it had' not penetrated to the surging mind
of Scout Harris. He tried to recall West Ketchem on the map of New
Jersey in his school geography.

But evidently West Ketchem had scorned the geography. Or else the
geography had scorned West Ketchem.

Undecided what to do, Pee-wee lingered a few moments among the mass of
charred timbers, and desks ruined and laid, low, and broken blackboards,
all in an indiscriminate heap.

"I bet the fellers that live here are glad," he said to himself. "That
isn't saying they have to believe in fires, except camp-fires, but