"How will you get down again?"
"Oh, I'll jump down." It was certainly ten or twelve feet to the ground. "Now I am going in after Carolus; I'll drop him down from here, and you must be sure to catch him."
I groped my way down the half-dark stairway from the loft, stumbled along, in the pitch-black darkness of the shed, over a chopping-block and a heap of shavings, and at last got to the part of the wood-shed where the hens were. I opened the door softly and fumbled with my hand along the roost they were sitting on. But, O dear! O dear! such a squawking and screeching! You haven't the least idea how Madam Land's hens could squawk. It was exactly as if I were murdering them all at once. Outside of the wall I could hear Karsten fairly howling with laughter. I kept fumbling around in the dark, for I wanted to find Carolus. I think I got hold of every single hen; all their beaks were stretched wide, letting out one and the same piercing squawk.
And how Karsten and Peter laughed down below!—Page 109.
Then I heard the door of Madam Land's kitchen thrown open, and footsteps across the yard—then Madam Land's voice, "Come with your stick, Land, there are thieves in the hen-house." The door of the wood-shed was opened and Madam Land's maid burst in and saw me. "It is the judge's Inger Johanne, madam," she called.
"Is it that spindleshanks again?" I heard Madam Land say—yes, she really said "spindleshanks"; but to me she only said, "Your cock is not here, girl; he has not been here all day—not for two or three days, I believe."
"But he was here this morning."
"Not at all. You didn't see straight. He is not here, I tell you."