But Sam refused to ask for the key again, He didn't want to bother his father so soon, and he didn't want the bother himself. He had his new "Cæsar" lesson to study; to-morrow, after school, he and Jonas would look round at the house, and find some way to recover the ball, for even the stern and studious Sam knew the value of a ball.
So Thursday noon the boys all hurried up to the Wilson house,—Sam, Jonas, and all. They examined it on every side. They came back to the hole where the ball was lost.
"There's the cold-air box," said Jonas. "Could not Dick crawl in?"
Now, Dick was a very small pattern of a boy, indeed, to be still a boy. Really he might crawl into the cold-air box. He tried it! He did get in! He had to squeeze through one part, but worked his way down fairly into the cellar, and screamed out with triumph that he had found the ball close by the hole! But how was Dick to get out again? He declared he could never scramble up. He slipped back as fast as he tried. He would look for the cellar stairs, only it was awful dark except just by the hole. He had a match in his pocket. Jack ran to the Pentzes' and got a candle, and they rolled it in to Dick, and waited anxiously to see where he would turn up next. They heard him, before long, pounding at a door round the corner of the house. He had found the cellar stairs, and a door with bolts and a great rusty key, which he succeeded in turning. The boys pulled at the door and it opened; and there stood Dick with the ball in one hand, picking up the candle with the other!
What a chance to enter the house! Down the cellar stairs, up into the attics! Strange echoes in the great halls, and dark inside; for all the windows were closed and barred,—all but in one room upstairs that opened on a back veranda. It was a warm late-autumn day, and the sun poured down pleasantly upon a seat in the corner of the veranda, where a creeper was shedding its last gay leaves.
"What a place to study!" exclaimed Sam.
"Let's come and spend to-morrow," said John Stebbins; "there's no school."
"No school Friday, on account of the furnace!" exclaimed Jack. "Let's bring a lot of provisions and stay the whole day here."
"We might lay it in to-night," said John Stebbins; "we'll come up after school this afternoon!"
"And I'll tell father about the key this evening," said Sam; "he won't mind, if he finds we have got one."