For several seconds he stood staring down into the tunnel, remembering how the black shadow had disappeared from the interior of the shed. Many conflicting thoughts crowded his mind, and his impulse was to go down and explore the passageway. But the severe cold made him think better of it, and, closing the trap and replacing the hay, he picked up the tin container he had come to get and went back to the lodge.
“I’ll get my hat and coat on and get some of the boys to go with me,” he thought, as he opened the kitchen door and went in.
Coach Jordan and his helpers were nearly finished. Barry left the can and went into the living room, picking up his coat and hat. Kent and the twins were not around at the time, and so Barry slipped out of the front door alone. His chums were in the bedroom attending to the fire there.
“I’ll just take a peek along that corridor myself,” he decided, feeling in his pocket for his flashlight and noting with satisfaction that it was there. “Then maybe I’ll take the whole crowd for a tour of it, providing it is safe to do so!”
Arriving once more in the tool house, he moved the bale of hay aside and raised the trapdoor, listening keenly before making a descent into the newly found passage. No sound came to him as he stood in perfect silence, and at last, thinking that it was safe to proceed, he turned on the beam of his light and carefully walked down the steps. There were seven steps, and when he reached the bottom he turned the light down the tunnel. He had closed the door of the opening and now stood alone under the earth.
The passage was long and sloped away farther than the shaft of light would reveal. With a rapidly beating heart he began to advance, walking slowly and quietly, his eyes alert and his nerves drawn tight. The thought came to him that he was drawing farther and farther away from his companions and that he ought to go back and get some of them, but the impulse to go on was too strong, and he kept advancing.
The tunnel was well made. He was able to walk upright and had to bend low only at one place where a tree root broke through and crossed the underground way. It was a dry place and not very cold. The sides of the tunnel had been carefully cut, and it seemed to him that it had been built for some definite purpose.
“But what can it be for?” he wondered. “Does Mrs. Morganson know that it is here? Maybe I’ll know more about it all when I get to the end.”
The end was near. He could see some boards before him, and a few moments later he stopped, playing the beam of the light against the boards that closed the tunnel. They seemed to be fairly new ones, and they simply fitted into the soil. He put out his hand to push against them and then thought better of it, pausing to listen once more, his flashlight out. The blackness seemed to crush in on him.
“No telling what is on the other side of that boarding. If I can’t push it open, I’ll go back and get the others.”