"It isn't so much as you might think," shouted Pee-wee.

"He must be hollow from head to foot," said Margaret.

"Yes, eat everything," wailed Minerva in the final spirit of utter
resignation.

"Yum--yum," called Pee-wee. "Oh, boy, it's good."

And still the man in the moon winked down, and smiled his merry scout
smile upon Scout Harris.




CHAPTER XXIII

THE DREAM OF KEEKIE JOE

On that night, in the back yard of Billy Gilson's tire repair shop,
Keekie Joe, the sentinel of Barrel Alley, sat upon a pile of old Ford
radiators, untangling a complicated mass of fishing-line. He was
trying to follow a selected strand through the various fastnesses of
the labyrinth.

The involved mass was really not a fishing-line but, in its untangled
state, an apparatus for confounding and enraging pedestrians.
Stretched across the sidewalk between two tin cans its function was to
catch in the feet of passersby, thus pulling the clamorous cans about
the ankles of the victim. Keekie Joe had always found this game