This was it: the shed in which Mrs. Grundy's famous flock of turkeys was carefully secured at night stood at some distance to the back of her house, and as she slept in one of the front rooms, there was slight risk of her seeing or hearing anything. What Harold proposed was, that, slipping out of their rooms after everybody was asleep, they should meet behind the turkey-shed, bringing with them three gunny sacks and a dark lantern. Having got the gobblers safely into the sacks, they would then creep round the back way to the building in which the squire's office was situated, climb in through a lower window, and so upstairs to the room in which the turkeys were to be left.
"You've a great head, Hal," said Jack Wilding admiringly, when all this had been detailed, "and you can count on us every time—can't he, boys?"
"You bet he can," chorused the crowd.
A satisfactory plan of campaign having thus been settled upon, the meeting was adjourned until Monday midnight, then to assemble behind Mrs. Grundy's turkey-shed. The eventful night came; and as midnight drew near, one by one the boys gathered with throbbing hearts at the rendezvous.
At length all but Tommy Short, whose courage had failed him, and Bob Henderson, whose father had nabbed him in the act of slipping out, and sent him back to bed with a spank, turned up.
"THEY WERE TOO BEWILDERED BY THE BLAZE TO MAKE ANY NOISE. Page 227"
It was an intensely dark night and blowing half a gale. all of which was in favour of the enterprise. The shed door was found to be simply secured with a wooden latch, and lifting this the conspirators tip-toed inside; and then Charlie Thompson, who carried the dark lantern, suddenly turned its glare full upon the startled gobblers as they nodded solemnly side by side upon their roost.
They were too bewildered by the blaze to make any noise, and before they could recover their self-possession sufficiently to exclaim at so extraordinary an apparition, the other boys had stepped behind them, and with quick, deft movements slipped the big sacks over their heads, thus reducing them at one bold stroke to helpless captives.
The poor turkeys struggled and "gobbled" a good deal in their narrow quarters, but all to no purpose; and full of terror, no doubt, at their strange treatment, were hurried out of the shed into the lane, and thence through dark and silent ways to the rear of the squire's building. Here the conspirators paused for breath and consultation.