Pee-wee said he could see the oil stove had been used by the smell—­he’s got such sharp eyes that be can see a smell.  I told him he had a classy eye because there was a pupil in it, and you ought to have seen Mr. Donnelle laugh.  I guess he thought we were crazy.

“Well we should worry about the tramp,” I said, “especially now that we have a boat like this.  The next thing to do is to bring the whole troop and get her fixed up.”

One thing was easy anyway.  Just below Bridgeboro, where we live, there is a kind of a branch flowing into the Bridgeboro River.  We always called it the creek.  Now we found out from Mr. Donnelle that it started along up above Little Valley.  Over there they call it Dutch Creek.  He said that at high tide we could float the houseboat right down into Bridgeboro River and then wait for the up tide or else tow it up to Bridgeboro.  Cracky, I could see it would be a cinch ark!  I was glad because we fellows didn’t have money enough to have the boat carted by land.  But, good night, this way was easy.

The next morning I sent a birch bark call to an the fellows in our troop.  I sent them each a little piece of birch bark by courier.  Connie Bennett, he’s our courier.  And that meant come to Special Meeting—­W.  S. W. S. means without scoutmaster.  So pretty soon they began coming up to Camp Solitaire.  That’s the name I gave the tent I have on our lawn.  When they were all there, I told them about Mr. Donnelle and the houseboat, and we decided that we’d hike over to Little Valley and pile right in and get it ready instead of bringing it to Bridgeboro first.  We decided that if we worked on it for about three days, it would be ready.

So we all started to hike it along the road to Little Valley.  We had an adventure before we got there, and I guess I’d better ten you about it.  I made a map too, so you can see the way everything was.  It’s about five miles to Little Valley by the road.

Well, we were an hiking it along, sometimes going scout-pace and most of the time jollying Pee-wee, when all of a sudden I noticed a mark on a rock that I was sure was a scout mark.  It was an arrow and it was marked with a piece of slate.  Underneath the arrow was another mark like a pail, so I knew the sign meant that there was water in that direction.

I didn’t know any scouts around our way that could be camping there, but whenever a scout sees a scout sign he usually likes to follow it up.  So I told the fellows I was going to follow if there was any time.  They said it was an old last year’s mark, but go ahead if I wanted to, and I told them I’d meet them at Little Valley later.  So now comes the adventure.  As soon as I left the fellows, I hit the trail into the woods just like you’ll see on the map I made.  It wasn’t much of trail and I guess a fellow couldn’t follow it if he wasn’t a scout.  It was all thick woods like a jungle kind of, and I could see where branches had been broken by somebody that passed there.  Pretty soon it began to get swampy and there wasn’t any more trail at all.