At the same time there was the sound of shoes kicking on wood, and the sound came from one of the mangers, or the place in the old horse stalls where the animals were given their feed.
"He must have fallen down through the place where they put the hay!" cried Russ, and he and Tad hurried to the stall. Just as they reached it Mun Bun stood up in the manger, which was like a long, narrow box. He was covered with wisps of hay, and he was crying, but a quick look showed that he was not hurt.
"What happened?" asked Russ, as he lifted his little brother down out of the manger.
"Oh, I was hiding upstairs, and I walked across the floor, and then I falled down a hole, and I thought I couldn't get out, but I did," said Mun Bun.
"I see how it happened," remarked Tad. "There's a hole cut through the floor upstairs, and a sort of chute that comes down into the horse stall manger. They used to shove hay down that chute, and there must have been some still stuck in it. Mun Bun fell down the hole, and he wasn't hurt on account of the hay."
So, that was how it had happened. Mun Bun had stepped into the hay chute, and, there being a wad of old fodder still in it, he had been dropped down gently, almost as though down a dumb waiter shaft, into the manger below.
"Well, you didn't find me, anyhow, I comed down myself," said Mun Bun when he had stopped crying and had been brushed off by Russ and Tad.
Then the boys played hide and seek a little longer, but Mun Bun did not again go up into the loft of the barn to play.
When the game was over they went back to the house. Mun Bun said he was hungry, and Russ admitted that he, too, could eat some bread and jam.
"If mother's there she'll give us some," he said to Tad. "But if she isn't we can get it ourselves."