Now in this chapter not a single word is spoken. I bet you’ll say, “Thank goodness for that.” My sister said this will be the best chapter of the whole book because all of us keep still. I should worry about her. One thing, I’m glad on account of not having to use any quotation marks—I hate those things. But anyway just because our tongues weren’t going that doesn’t mean our feet weren’t going. And I’ll tell you this much, something terrible is going to happen. Believe me, there are worse things than talking. Maybe it’s all right to keep still, but it got us in a lot of trouble and I’m never going to keep still again as long as I live. Pee-wee says he isn’t either. Hervey says it’s actions that count, but words are all right—I like words.
Now I don’t know whether Hervey knew where he was going or not. That fellow knows all the country for miles around Temple Camp. He made believe he was lost. He says no matter where you are you can’t really get lost because you’re some place and if you just keep going you’ll come to some place else and he says anyway one place is as good as another. So even if you’re home maybe you’re lost.
Anyway he kept going along that country road that branched off from the turnpike. It was uphill and pretty soon we came to Old Corners only there wasn’t anything left of it except an old church. I guess the rest of the village must have rolled down the hill and started up in another place.
Gee whiz, I like it up there on the hill but you never can tell what a village will do when it gets started. I was just going to say that maybe it was on a funny-bone hike only I happened to remember about keeping still. It was nice and quiet up on that hill—no wonder.
Up there were three or four old houses with nobody living in them and they were falling to pieces. The church was ramshackle, I guess it was good and old. There was grass growing between the wooden steps and there was moss all around on the stone step. All the windows were broken and there was a great big spider-web across one window. There were old shingles on the ground too, that had blown off the roof. There were initials cut in the railing of the steps. There was an old ladder standing up against the steeple.
“L-l-l——” Pee-wee started to say, and just caught himself in time.
Hervey walked straight for the ladder and up he went, with the rest of us after him. The steeple wasn’t so high but it was pretty high. The ladder stood against a little window maybe halfway up. Hervey crawled in through the window and so did the rest of us. He kept looking back holding his finger to his mouth; he looked awful funny.
In there was a kind of a little gallery around the edge and you could look down in through the middle. It smelled like dried wood in there; it smelled kind of like an attic. It was terribly hot. I saw something hanging that I thought was an old dried rag and when I grabbed it, swhh, just like that it gave me a start, and I let go pretty quick because it was a bat. We threw it out through the opening. There were a couple more th............