The other boys said good-night to their hostess as they passed out of the door, and then, in single file, they followed the farmer across the wide barn-yard. They entered the building by a low door at one corner, went along a narrow aisle between two high board partitions, and came in finally on the wide threshing-floor between the bays. This floor extended the entire length of the barn, and on each side of it, about midway, a narrow vertical ladder ran up between fixed posts, by which one could reach the top of the mow at whatever height it might be.
At this season of the year the hay was greatly reduced in quantity. The bay on one side of the threshing-floor, was quite empty; on the other side the mow reached to a height of only eight or ten feet from the floor. The farmer pointed to the ladder on this side, and said smiling, "You must dees latter goen oop, und you vill de bett finden."
"It's splendid up here!" he cried. "Oceans an' oceans o' room!"
So, one by one, the boys climbed to their strange quarters on the haymow. The last one to go up was Plumpy the Freak. Glück's uncle looked in amused astonishment at the ponderous, awkward figure, with its masses of moving flesh, as the fat boy slowly worked his way upward.
"Vell! vell!" he exclaimed, holding his lantern high, in order to see the more clearly, "uf I don't see it myself, I don't haf pelieved it."
Hanging the lantern on a wooden pin in the framework, and cautioning the boys not to disturb it, and not to strike a match nor make a fire of any kind in the barn, the farmer responded to the chorus of good-nights from the mow, and made his way through the darkness, back across the barnyard to his house. On almost any other occasion there would have been an unlimited amount of horse-play, before these boys could have settled themselves for the night and gone to sleep. But now all the boys were too weary to be gay, and in less than twenty minutes from the time of the mounting of the ladder the whole company was asleep.
Yet not the whole company. Brightly closed his eyes, but sleep would not come to him. In this strange place, in this hour of quiet, with only the heavy breathing around him to break the stillness; with only the dim light of the lantern to make partly visible and wholly weird the huge timbers and vast spaces of the great barn's interior,--thought took possession of his mind and drove slumber from his eyelids. Regret assailed him; conscience awakened, and began again her vigorous reproach.