"Well," her twin said at last, "I s'pose I'll have to go in after him."
"How can you?" asked Vi promptly, but excitedly, too.
"I can crawl into that hole——"
"Isn't it too small?"
"Well, I'm not so big," replied Laddie. "I guess I can do it. I'm going to try."
He knelt down before the round mouth of the culvert. It was a piece of drainpipe with a rough rim at the edge of the hole. Laddie poked his head into the hole.
"It's as dark as the inside of your pocket, Vi Bunker," he said, in a muffled voice.
"Shall I run get a candle?" asked his sister.
"No," sighed Laddie; and even his sigh sounded funny from inside the pipe. "If you do they'll want to know what you want it for. And if we are going to catch this—this whatever-it-is, we want to catch it all by ourselves. Wait."
Vi granted that request. She waited, watching Laddie's plump little body wriggling farther and farther into the culvert. His jacket caught several times on the rough rim of the opening. But he persevered.