“What sort of house is that?” asked Mr. Brown.  He looked at it closely.  The little house had no windows, and only one door.  And there was a queer smell about it, as though it had once been on fire.

“That’s a smoke-house,” said Mr. Trimble.  “It’s where I smoke my hams and bacon.  I hang them up in there, build a fire of corn-cobs and hickory wood chips, and make a thick smoke.  The smoke dries the ham and bacon so it will keep all winter.”

“What a funny house!” said Sue.

“It hasn’t any windows,” observed Bunny.

“We have to have smoke-houses tight and without windows,” explained Mr. Trimble, “so the smoke won’t all get out.”

“Are there any hams or bacon in there now?” asked Mr. Brown.

“No, we don’t do any smoking until fall, when we kill the pigs.”

“Well, there’s something in there that bothers our dog,” went on the children’s father.  For, all this while, Splash was running around the smoke-house, barking more loudly than before.

Just then Bunny Brown thought of something.  He pulled at his father’s coat and whispered to him: 

“Oh, Daddy!  Maybe Tom Vine is shut up in there—­shut up in the smoke-house!”

Mr. Brown looked first at Bunny and then at the strange little house which had no windows.  The door of it was tightly shut.

“That’s so, Bunny,” said Mr. Brown.  “Perhaps Tom is in there.  That would make Splash bark, for he knows where Tom is.”  Mr. Brown thought as Bunny did, that Mr. Trimble might have caught Tom, and locked him up in the dark smoke-house.

“Oh, Daddy!  Do you s’pose Tom’s in there?” asked Sue in a whisper, for she had heard what Bunny had whispered.

Daddy Brown nodded his head.  He walked up to Mr. Trimble and said: 

“Now look here!  There’s something in that smoke-house, and I want to see what it is.  Our dog knows there’s something there, and I’m pretty sure of it myself.”

“Well, what do you think it is?” asked Mr. Trimble.  “If there’s anyone in there I don’t know it.  But I’ll open the door, and let you see.  Your dog certainly is making a lot of noise.”

“Have you got that poor boy, Tom Vine, locked up in there?” asked Mr. Brown.

The farmer laughed.

“Tom Vine locked up in there?  Certainly not!” he cried.  “I wish I did have.  I’d like to punish him for running away from me.  But I haven’t seem him since he was at your camp.  No, sir!  He isn’t in my smoke-house.  I don’t believe anything, or anybody, is in there.  But I’ll open the door and let you look inside.  Why, the door isn’t locked,” the farmer went on, “and I guess I couldn’t keep a boy like Tom Vine in a smoke-house without locking the door on him.”

Mr. Brown did not know what to think now.  As for Bunny and Sue they thought surely their new friend, Tom, was locked in the queer little house.

“Oh, now we’ll see him!” cried Sue, and she felt very glad.