A few moments later the front-door had been securely bolted, and Mrs. Perry, lantern in hand, was conducting her two strange visitors out of the back door and down the garden.

“That’s the fowls’ house,” she explained, flashing her lantern over the door of the little building as they passed it, “and here is the barn.”

She opened the door, and threw the lantern light all over the wooden shed.  It was spotlessly clean, and sweet with the smell of the straw which was scattered about one end of it.  There were some bundles and some loose straw lying on the ground.  Huldah sank down on one of the bundles with a little cry of relief, while Dick burrowed delightedly in the loose straw.

“You won’t be afraid, you think?”

“No, ma’am, thank you, not with Dick,” she answered, bravely.

She did not feel quite so brave, though, when the light had gone, and she heard the house-door bolted, and found herself and Dick shut in alone in the dark in that great empty strange place.  She did wish that Mrs. Perry had seen fit to leave them the lantern.  Rats loved straw, Huldah knew, so did mice, and she was dreadfully afraid of both.  The moonlight shone in through the sides of the barn, and Huldah had a feeling that eyes were at all the chinks, watching her.

To try to forget the rats and mice and not to see the eyes, she nestled down in the straw, with one bundle at her head and another at her back, and hoped she would soon fall asleep and forget everything.  But though she was so tired, or, perhaps, because she was overtired, sleep when it did come was not sound or pleasant.  Every time Dick rustled the straw, she awoke.  Every time a bird called or an owl hooted, she started up wide awake.  She woke once from a dream of her uncle, with, as she thought, his voice echoing in her ear.  Another time she felt certain he was banging at the barn door, trying to get in, to beat her and Dick, and take them both back.

“Oh, I wish it was morning!” she sighed, and sat up on her straw bed, to see if daylight was beginning to dawn yet.

But all was dark still; even the moon had gone.  She was just about to lie wearily down again, when a real, not a dream sound, caught her ear.  The sound of nailed boots on stones, and stealthy footsteps.

“It really is someone climbing the wall and coming up the garden,” she thought to herself, and her mouth and throat grew dry with terror, and her heart beat suffocatingly.  “Dick!” she gasped, in a low voice.  “Dick, they’re coming, they’ve found us.  Listen!”

Dick raised himself on his haunches, with his ears cocked.  Huldah was seized with sudden fear that he would growl, and so betray their hiding-place, for her uncle would recognise Dick’s growl in a moment.  She laid her hand on his collar firmly.  “Quiet!” she commanded, firmly, and knew that he would obey.  She tried to peer out through the chinks, but it was hard to move without rustling the straw, and all without was black as pitch.