Licorice Stick's business was
contemplating the world and he always attended strictly to business.
"Lordy me!" he said, rolling his eyes, "you don' go nowheres
that kid 'e tell you. Dat wrigglin' man, he no man, he a sperrit.
Don' you go near dat bridge, you get a spell. Yo keep away f'm dat
bridge."
How much this had to do with Pee-Wee's actually going to the
scene of the fire it would be hard to say. If he had not talked
with Whitie he probably would not have gone. At all events, he had
nothing else to do and he wanted to think. So he followed the trail
through the woods to the highway.
It seemed quite probable that Whitie's jerky sentences were about
true, that the doctor had been compelled to turn back by reason of
the burning bridge. The fact that Whitie was holding his imperial
court on the doctor's porch made this part of his story seem true.
Perhaps it would be about right to say that little Whitie's
spasmodic announcements directed Pee-Wee in his idle wanderings on
that morning when he was fearful and sick at heart.
Long afterwards he remembered with interest that it was little
Whitie Bungel (for whose recovery he had sacrificed two hundred and
fifty dollars and not a little glory) who put him in the way of
the terrible discovery that he made on that fateful day.
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