"Well, our kitten is on the top of your old barn and can't get down. Can you lend me a ladder to get him down with?"
"Kitten on my barn? How did he get there?" and now the old man opened the door slowly and cautiously. He was bent with age and had white hair and a long white beard.
"He went up with a kite," said Bert, and explained the case, to which the old man listened with interest.
"Well! well! well!" exclaimed Mr. Roscoe, in a high piping voice. "Going to take a sail through the air, was he? You'll have to build him a balloon, eh?"
"I think he had better stay on the ground after this."
"He must be a high-flyer of a cat," and the old man chuckled over his joke.
"Will you lend me a ladder?" went on Bert.
"Certainly, my lad. The ladder is in the cow-shed yonder. But you'll have to raise it yourself, or get somebody to raise it for you. My back is too old and stiff for such work."
"I'll try it alone first," answered the boy.
He soon had the long ladder out and was dragging it across the common. It was very heavy and he wondered who he could get to help him raise it. Just then Danny Rugg came along.