It is hard to say what might have happened if Townsend Ripley had not turned the sign so that it said STOP just as Pee-wee consumed the last mouthful.
"Isstrucsmlikewood," ejaculated Pee-wee, consuming the last mouthful.
"Issoundlkbo--boards!" Billy was quick to raise the bar of the traffic sign and plunge it down again.

It was certainly no tentacle of root that the probing bar struck, but something hard, yet ever so slightly yielding, something which gave forth a hollow sound.
It was easy to explore America after Columbus had shown the way and it was a simple matter now for Townsend, with the little shovel, to dig a hole three or four feet deep about the traffic sign.

The boys all kneeled about, peering in as if buried treasure were there, until an area of muddy wood was revealed.

Roly Poly knocked it with a rock and the noise convinced them that the wood was of considerable area and that probably _nothing was beneath it_.
"Well--what--do--you--know--about--that ?" Billy asked incredulously.
"Jab it down somewhere else," said Brownie.
Pee-wee moved the metal rod a yard or so distant and plunged it in the ground again.

There was the same hollow sound.