“O dear! Suppose he is standing inside behind a curtain and shoots us with a gun!” said Massa. “He said he had something that would make us go away, you know.”
The situation began to be rather uncomfortable; perhaps we had better go away, notwithstanding the fun. At that instant, we heard a strange, short, labored breathing from the loft stairway. We both turned,—the stairs were just outside the door,—a yellow beard showed in the dim light. True as gospel, it was Cavallius! If I live to be as old as Methusaleh, I shall never forget how terribly Massa shrieked. She shrieked as if beside herself, or as if some one had stuck a knife into her.
I did not scream, but I must own that I wasn’t at all comfortable. However, this was no time for any long meditation.
Cavallius’ little legs straddled over the high doorsill, and now his whole body was in the loft. There was only one door, the door by which he had entered; our “peep-hole” was the only window.
Not a word was exchanged between Massa and me, but with a common impulse, we sprang over to the trap-door in the corner through which the hay was thrown down into the stable below.
Plump! Massa was down. Plump! I was down. Both of us landed on a big heap of hay that lay just under the trap-door.
I glanced up to see whether Cavallius were coming down the way we did, but I saw nothing of him. We rushed to the stable door, out to the Peckells’ courtyard, out to the street, but not even here dared we stop. The safest place at that moment seemed to us to be the dean’s garden, so in there we dashed, fastening the high garden gate after us. There! Out of danger! Massa was chalk-white with terror.
Looking through the picket fence a moment after, we saw Cavallius with more than usual dignity come out of Peckells’ yard and disappear through Stiansen’s gate.
But how in the world Cavallius, a perfect stranger in the town, found the way all by himself up to Peckells’ hayloft that day, will always remain a mystery to me.