The next thing they knew, Lucy Ann, convulsed with laughter, was telling them a story about Uncle Balla and the man in the hen-house. They jumped up, and pulling on their clothes ran out in the yard, thinking to see the prisoner.
Instead of doing so, they found Uncle Balla standing by the hen-house with a comical look of mystification and chagrin; the roof had been lifted off at one end and not only the prisoner, but every chicken was gone!
The boys were half inclined to cry; Balla's look, however, set them to laughing.
"Unc' Balla, you got to give me every chicken you got, 'cause you said you would," said Willy.
"Go 'way from heah, boy. Don' pester me when I studyin' to see which way he got out."
"You ain't never had a horse get through the roof before, have you?" said Frank.
"Go 'way from here, I tell you," said the old man, walking around the house, looking at it.
As the boys went back to wash and dress themselves, they heard Balla explaining to Lucy Ann and some of the other servants that "the man them chillern let git away had just come back and tooken out the one he had locked up"; a solution of the mystery he always stoutly insisted upon.
One thing, however, the person's escape effected—it prevented Willy's ever hearing any more of his mistake; but that did not keep him now and then from asking Uncle Balla "if he had fastened his horses well."