"S'pose I want ol' Uncle George to kick the liver out of _me_! Why, I jus' looked in the door one day when he was in there, and he swore at me till I was out of sight; and he said if he ever caught me on his premises again, he'd kick the liver out of me! And I bet he would, too!" Relatively speaking, ol' Uncle George Bond was nobody's uncle; but as a matter of nomenclature he was everybody's. He was death on boys, to be sure. However, his unfriendly attitude was of very little importance at this particular time because he was out of town. "Gone to Sodus for a month," was the information Sube presently imparted. "What makes you think so?" asked the skeptical Gizzard, still intent on the preservation of his liver. "Saw him buy his ticket and get on the train this mornin'. That's what makes me think so! And I heard him tell the agent he was goin' for a month's vacation!" "All right," said Gizzard. "I'll go in there if you will--if we can get in." Sube squeezed through without a great deal of difficulty; but Gizzard stuck fast somewhere about amidships. He kicked and wriggled while Sube pulled, but it was all in vain. It was necessary for Gizzard to back out and shift his cargo before he could come into port. He presently handed in to Sube one baseball, one broken padlock, one bicycle-wrench, one slingshot, and other articles too numerous to mention; and having been thus lightened, he came through without difficulty. The wonders of the forbidden country unfolded with such bewildering rapidity that the youthful explorers had difficulty in deciding what to try first. However, they soon concluded to redecorate the interior of the barn with remnants left over from the recent painting of ol' Uncle George's house. When they had tired of being painters they opened a carpenter shop and started to build a boat out of some old boards with the aid of ol' Uncle George's razor-edged tools. This went very well until Sube hammered his thumb, when he retired from the concern and left Gizzard to complete the vessel alone; but after Gizzard had planed a thin layer from the end of his finger he too retired, and the carpenter business went to the wall. They next engaged in the manufacture of cider, opening a mill in a corner of the barn, where they found a small hand-press. Sube turned the crank while Gizzard poured in bushels of imaginary apples. Then they "put on the brakes" to squeeze out the imaginary juice, which was drawn from a spigot at the bottom in real glasses and bottles with which the place seemed to abound. After a little the strain on their imagination became so great that something had to be done to relieve it. "If we jus' had a few apples we could make a little _real_ cider," Sube suggested tentatively. "Well, I know where we can get some," said Gizzard. "There's a tree jus' loaded with harvest apples right out behind the barn!"