But the man stopped, gathered up a fork-full from the floor and thrust it down the chute.
“That will be enough to quiet the old boy,” he muttered, and departed down the stairs. Harvey felt a shiver of relief run through him.
“Lucky I closed that door,” he muttered. “If he’d gone to that and seen the ladder, we’d have been done for.”
A few minutes later, the little party from the house had shut and locked the barn door again and returned to their beds. Harvey, stiff in every joint, managed to slide down the rope into the arms of Tom Edwards. A moment more, and they were both snug in the hay, exhausted but thankful.
Sleep soon overtook them, and they rested till the morning light came in through the window. Then they aroused and scurried down the ladder, setting off on as brisk a run as Harvey could manage with his lame ankle, across the fields to the woods, without stopping to remove the ladder.
“That was a close call, Tom,” gasped Harvey, as they rested a half hour later. “Supposing they had caught us? We’d be in the town lock-up, like as not.”
Later that morning, a group of boys stood with Edward Warren, gazing at the ladder raised to the upper barn door.
“And only to think there was somebody in there all the time,” said Henry Burns. “Too bad you didn’t catch them, Mr. Warren. What do you suppose they wanted?”
“Tramps,” replied Edward Warren, “and old Billy didn’t like ’em.”
Christmas day came in warm and genial. It was a wonderful day for winter, even in Maryland. The party went into the woods and fields in the morning, and returned with game for Mammy Stevens to roast. The Christmas dinner followed. Young Joe dragged himself from the dinner table, fairly groaning with his cargo of good things. The others were hardly better off. They stood together on the Warren verandah.