Immediately there was more or less excitement in the hay; and then came the unmistakable scolding of a setting hen. Merritt backed out, laughing.
"There's your ferocious bulldog!" he told Tubby; "but we'll leave old Biddy to her eggs, and try another place. Plenty of room in this hotel without chucking the other guests out of their nests."
After a while they made themselves comfortable. Tubby, before turning in, had prowled around a little. He told the others that as a true scout he was only taking an inventory of his surroundings, so that if there should happen to come a sudden midnight alarm he at least would know what to do in order to lead the way out of the barn by a rear exit.
"Smart boy, Tubby," Merritt told him, when he heard him say this; and it always pleased the fat scout to receive a word of praise, possibly because the occasions when he deserved any were few and far between.
They lay in the sweet hay, and talked in low tones. No one else seemed to be pushed so hard for a place to sleep as to come to the barn, for which all of the chums professed to be very grateful.
In the course of the conversation, which had more or less bearing on their strange mission abroad, the subject of the precious paper came to the front. Perhaps it was Merritt himself who mentioned it, because the matter was frequently in his thoughts, and he seemed to be growing more and more anxious, the nearer they drew to the place where he anticipated finding Steven Meredith.
"You've never really told us who this man is, Merritt, and how he comes to be wandering around the world with a paper belonging to your grandfather hidden away under the lining of the case containing his field-glasses," Rob remarked while Tubby, who had just been yawning, sat up and seemed to be wide awake again.
"That's a fact, Merritt," he chimed in. "If you don't object, why, we'd like to be told."
"The fact of the matter is," replied Merritt, "I don't know a great deal more than you do, come to think of it. Grandfather Crawford comes from old Scotch stock, so he's a canny sort of an old gentleman. No use of my telling you about the way he treated my father when he was a young man and married against the wishes of his parents, because that you already know. It's about the paper, also of Steven Meredith you're curious to hear?"
"Yes, go along, please," begged Tubby.