“I’ll go with you,” put in Pepper. “I am tired of being boxed in here.”
“Well, be careful, or you’ll give the snap away,” cautioned Andy. “Some of the steps of the back stairs squeak terribly. I left my shoes in the trunk room when I went down.”
“We’ll leave them here,” answered The Imp, and took off the footwear then and there, and Jack did likewise.
It was no easy thing to climb through the ceiling opening into the trunk room, and once above they had to feel their way through the darkness to the door. Pepper stubbed his toe on a trunk and drew a sharp breath of pain.
“No, but I put an awful dent in the trunk,” was the joking reply. “Let us get a candle when we go down. I hate this darkness.”
With bated breath the two cadets walked out into the deserted hall and then down the back stairs. Once they heard somebody close at hand slam a door and their hearts leaped into their throats.
“If anybody sees us, run like mad for the trunk room and fasten the door somehow,” said Jack. “We don’t want a soul to know what we are up to. If we can get food we can stand Cuddle and Crabtree off indefinitely.”
At last the boys reached the back entryway, and through a crack of the door peered into the kitchen. Nobody was present, and the big pantry was also deserted, and so was the mess hall.
“We’ve got it all to ourselves!” whispered Pepper joyfully. “Jack, this is a cinch, a picnic! Let us take up all the food we can carry!”
“Here is just what we want,” replied the major, and took from a hook two big waiters’ aprons. “We can bundle up a lot of stuff in these.”
“And here are two fresh tins of crackers, ten pounds in each tin. We must take these by all means—and that fresh chunk of cheese!”
“You take what you can carry to the trunk room,” answered Jack. “I’ll hunt up something a little more appetizing.”
While Pepper was on his errand the young major made a careful survey of the pantry, and into a wooden box he found there placed a freshly-boiled ham, some cold roast beef, several loaves of bread, some butter, three bottles of pickles, some cans of sardines and some bottles of milk. Then, from a barrel, he filled a wash basin with apples.
“This will do for the present, I’m thinking,” he said, as he surveyed the stuff. “Now for a candle and some matches,” and he procured them.