“Perhaps he slid out through one of the doors and went back to the house and is now laughing at us,” suggested Andy. He was busy wiping the mud from his hands with an old salt bag.
“No, he couldn’t have left by any of the doors, for they’re all bolted on the inside,” declared Jack.
“Maybe he went up in the loft and dropped from one of the windows,” suggested Randy.
The three boys took another look around, shouting Fred’s name several times as they did so. Then they went up in the loft. Here a grimy window stood half open.
“That window has been opened since we came,” declared Andy. “Just the same, he could easily drop out of it to the pile of hay below,” he added, looking down.
“We might as well go back to the house and see if he’s there,” said Jack, and thereupon the three boys descended to the lower floor of the barn, unlocked one of the doors, and made a quick dash for the farmhouse.
“I’m going to wash up a bit before I look for him,” said Andy. “I feel as dirty as a sewer digger.”
“And you look worse than that,” added his twin, with a laugh. “Come on, Jack, let us find Fred and make him tell us his secret,” he added to his cousin.
A few minutes after the three boys left the barn Aleck Pop entered the place to get a peach basket which the cook wanted. The colored man had been told that the baskets were in the far end of the barn where Jack Ness had placed them.
“I don’t see why Jack couldn’t’ve brung dat basket,” mumbled Aleck, as he stumbled along in the semi-darkness of the barn. He considered that all work around that place belonged to the hired man and not to himself, he being employed principally around the house and on outside errands.