“Why, hello, Donald, you wouldn’t think of filling me full of holes, I hope?”
That brought out another exclamation, this time filled with astonishment.
“What! is it you, Adrian, and coming right out of the front door as if you didn’t care a cent whether school kept or not? Whatever does this mean, tell me?”
“Oh! well, I’ve been all through the house,” commenced the other, in what seemed to be a careless tone.
“Then the whole lot have skipped, have they?” queried Donald, in a disappointed way; as though certain air castles that he had so carefully erected were thrown down by this news.
“Well, not that I know of; and in fact I reckon they’re not going to leave us in such a hurry after all; if that door only holds out, and I think it will,” was the staggering way Adrian conveyed his information.
Donald was pawing for his hand the next moment, anxious to shake it furiously.
“You don’t mean to tell me you’ve gone and made prisoners of the whole bunch?” he ejaculated, with his voice trembling in the excitement that racked him.
“Just what I was lucky enough to do!” declared the other. “Why, it was as easy as falling off a log. I just crept through from room to passage until I heard the low sound of voices, and discovered that she had taken the punchers to the store-room, to
hide them there until she gave the signal, when they were to rush out and do some sort of thing she’d fixed up, that was going to demoralize the lot of us.”