Wednesday afternoon, after school, the younger boys had gone to play at the old Wilson house, far away at the other end of the Main Street, beyond the Pentzes’.  This was an old deserted mansion, where the Wilsons themselves had lived once upon a time.  But it had taken a fortune and two furnaces to warm it in winter, and half a dozen men to keep the garden in order in summer, and it had grown now more fashionable to live at the other end of the town; so the Wilson family had moved down years ago, where the girls could see “the passing” and Mr. Wilson would be near his business.  Of late years he had not been able to let the house, and it had been closely shut to keep it from the tramps.  The boys had often begged the keys of their father, for they thought it would be such fun to take possession of the old house.  But Mr. Wilson said, “No; if a parcel of boys found their way in, all the tramps in the neighborhood would learn how to get in too.”  Still, it continued the object of the boys’ ambition to get into the house, and they were fond of going up to play in the broad grassy space by the side of the house; and they kept good oversight of the apple crop there.

On this Wednesday afternoon they were playing ball there, and lost the ball.  It had gone through a ventilation hole into the cellar part of the house.

Now, everybody knows that if a boy loses a ball it must be recovered, especially if he knows where it is.  There is not even a woman so stony-hearted but she will let in a troop of muddy-shoed boys through her entry (just washed) if they come to look for a ball, even if it has broken a pane of glass on its way.  So the boys got a ladder from the Pentzes’, and put it up at one of the windows where the blind was broken.  Jack went up the ladder.  The slat was off, but not in the right place to open the window.  There could not be any harm in breaking off another; then he could reach the middle of the sash and pull up the window.  No; it was fastened inside.  John Stebbins tried, but it was of no use.

“It would not help if we broke the window by the fastening,” said John; “for the shutters are closed inside with old-fashioned inside shutters.”

Here was the time to ask for the key.  They must have the key to find that ball, and the boys trudged back to meet Sam just going home from the Pentzes’.

But Sam refused to ask for the key again, He didn’t want to bother his father so soon, and he didn’t want the bother himself.  He had his new “Caesar” lesson to study; to-morrow, after school, he and Jonas would look round at the house, and find some way to recover the ball, for even the stern and studious Sam knew the value of a ball.

So Thursday noon the boys all hurried up to the Wilson house,—­Sam, Jonas, and all.  They examined it on every side.  They came back to the hole where the ball was lost.

“There’s the cold-air box,” said Jonas.  “Could not Dick crawl in?”