It was about eleven or twelve o'clock or after and the good people in the straggling cottages thereabout had put out their lights and retired to slumber before that wicked hour.
There was a stillness and gloom about these uninviting, dark houses; a cheerlessness not to be found in the densest woods.

They made Pee-wee feel lost and lonesome, as the dim, silent wilderness could never do.
Soon he reached the town, and there in the center of a spacious lawn was something which, in his loneliness and uncertainty, seemed the picture of gloom.

The ruin of a building which had been burned to the ground.
What a fire that must have been to witness! Better far than The Bandit of Harrowing Highway! Over a partly fallen arch, under which many reluctant feet had passed, Pee-wee could just make out the graven words: WEST KETCHEM PUBLIC SCHOOL.
West Ketchem.

So that was where he was.

But he had never heard of West Ketchem.