My advice to
you is to git along. Not that you done no damage or what _I'd_ call
damage--but it won't do no good fer yer to run amuck o' Ole Man Stanton.
'Cause he's a reg'lar grizzly, as the feller says."
The boys were silent a moment. Perhaps the thought of that desperate
convict stealing forth amid the wind and rain still gripped them; but it
began to dawn upon them also that they had been trespassing and that
they had taken great liberties with this ramshackle boat.
That the owner could object to their use of it seemed preposterous. That
he could take advantage of the technical "damage" done was quite
unsupposable. But no one knows better than a boy how many "grouchy" men
there are in the world, and these very boys had once been ordered out of
John Temple's lot with threat and menace.
"Does _everybody_ call him 'Old Man' Stanton?" Pee-wee asked. "Because
if they do that's pretty bad. Whenever somebody is known as 'Old Man' it
sounds pretty bad for him. They used to say 'Old Man Temple'--he's a man
we know that owns a lot of railroads and things; of course, he's
reformed now--he's a magnet----"
"Magnate," corrected Roy.
"But they _used_ to call him 'Old Man Temple'--everybody did. And it's a
sure sign--you can always tell," Pee-wee concluded.
"Wall, they call _me_ 'Ole Man Flint,'" said the visitor, "so I
guess----"
"Oh, of course," said Pee-wee, hastily, "I don't say it's always so, and
besides you're a--a----"
"Sheriff," Mr.
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