During the week Uncle James set up the tent not far from the hotel and in one corner of it built a staging.  He did not mind taking trouble for his beloved namesake, James Sanford Dunlee.  The stage was made to look like a room in an old-fashioned house.  It had a make-believe door and window and a make-believe fireplace with andirons and wood and shovel and tongs.  There was a rag rug on the floor, and on the three-legged stand stood the hour-glass with candles in iron candlesticks.  The fiddle-backed chairs were there and two hard “easy-chairs” and an old wooden “settle.”  Lucy and Bab said it looked “like somebody’s house,” and they wanted to go and live in it.

On the Saturday afternoon appointed the play had been well learned by the four actors.  Everything being ready, this cosy little sitting-room was now shut off from view by a calico curtain which was stretched across the stage by long strings run through brass rings.

The play would begin at half-past two.  Jimmy was dressed neatly in his very best clothes.  He had a roll of paper and a pencil in one of his pockets and during the play he meant to add up the number of people present and find out how much money had been taken.

“But Jimmy-boy, it won’t be very much,” said Edith.  “This is an empty town, and so queer too.  Something may happen at the last minute that will spoil the whole thing.”

She was right.  Something did happen which no one could have foreseen.  For an “empty” town Castle Cliff was famous for events.

As Jimmy left the hotel just after luncheon he overtook Nate Pollard and Joe Rolfe standing near a big sand bank, talking together earnestly.

“Come on, Jimmum,” said Nate; “we’ve got a spade for you.  We’re going to dig a cave in the side of this bank.”

“What’s the use of a cave?”

“Why, for one thing, we can run into it in time of an earthquake.”

“That’s so,” said Jimmy.  “Or we could stay in and be cave-dwellers.”

But as he took up the spade he chanced to look down at his new clothes.  He had spoiled one nice suit already and had promised his mother he would be more careful of this one.

“Wait till I put on my old clothes, will you?”

Nate laughed and snapped his fingers.  “We’re in a hurry.  I’ve got to be in the tent in half an hour.  Go along, you little dude!  We’ll dig the cave without you.”

The laugh cut Jimmy to the heart.  And he had been learning to like Nate so well.  A dude?  Not he!  Besides, what harm would dry sand do?  It’s “clean dirt.”

Then all in a minute he thought of that wild journey on the roof.  It had made a deeper impression upon him than any other event of his life.

“Poh!  Am I going to dig dirt in my best clothes just because Nate Pollard laughs at me?  I don’t ‘take stumps’ any more; there’s no sense in it, so there!”

And off he started, afraid to linger lest he should fall into temptation.  Jimmy might be heedless, no doubt he often was; but when he really stopped to think, he always respected his mother’s wishes and always kept his word to her.