“You’re in church.  Didn’t you promise mother you’d take us to church?”

“Yes.”

“But you slept all through the service,” said Kent, “and I shall tell mother so!”

“Kent Eddy, what are you trying to get at?  How did we get here, anyhow?” said Old Tilly, rising cautiously; and then, as he looked down on the empty room below, standing to his full height, he said.  “Well, if I ever!” a laugh breaking through his white teeth.  “I should say we had been in church!” he added.  “Why didn’t you fellows wake me up?  What did the folks think?”

“Oh, they only saw the two good boys sitting on the seat facing them!  We didn’t say we had another one smuggled in under beside us.  But my!  You did rap the seat awfully once with your elbow!”

“Well, I know one thing:  my shoulder aches from lying on that narrow seat so long,” said Old Tilly.  “I say, let’s go down to the wheels and the grub.  I’m half starved!”

“All right,” said Kent in rather a subdued way.  The morning service had stolen pleasingly through him, and somehow it seemed to the little lad as though their ship had been guided into a wonderfully quiet harbor.  And now he followed his brothers down the narrow stairs that they had so innocently groped their way up in darkness the night before.  The three had agreed to leave the church and partake of the lunch that was in the baskets on the wheels, but now they found doing so not as easy of accomplishment as they had at first thought.  When they tried the outer door they found to their dismay that it was locked.  Old Tilly would not believe Kent, and he pushed the latter’s hand off the door knob rather impatiently.  “Let me get hold of it!”

But, rattle the door as he might, he could not stir the rusty lock.

“Well, we’re locked in, that’s sure!” said Kent, looking almost dismayed.

CHAPTER V.

“I guess you’re right, Jotham,” Old Tilly said.

“But what in the world did they go and lock up for, when we got in just as easy as pie last night?” exclaimed Kent, disgustedly.

“Oh, ask something easy!” Jot cried.  “What I want to know is, how we’re going to get on the other side o’ that door.”

The care-taker, if one could call him that, of the old meeting-house, had taken it into his head to take care of it!—­or it may have been that the key chanced to be in his pocket, convenient.  At all events, the door was securely fastened.  The three boys reluctantly gave up the attempt to force it.

“Windows!” Kent suddenly exclaimed, and they all laughed foolishly.  They had not thought of the windows.

“That’s a good joke on the Eddy boys!” Old Tilly said.  “We sha’n’t hear the last of it if anybody lets on to father.”

“Better wait till we’re on the other side of the windows!” advised Kent.  “Maybe it isn’t a joke.”

There were windows enough.  They were ranged in monotonous rows on all sides of the church, above and below.  They all had tiny old-fashioned panes of glass and were fastened with wooden buttons.  It was the work of a minute to “unbutton” one of them and jump out.