Ivra clapped her hands and bounded forward. Eric did not follow. He stood to watch. When the Snow Witches saw Ivra running to them they rushed to meet her. For a minute she was lost in a cloud of blown snow, and then there she was dancing in their circle back and forth across the pasture, and then away, away, away! But before she frolicked quite out of sight she turned to look for her playfellow, and beckoned to him. "Come on," she called. "We're going to slide on the brook below the cornfield." But Eric did not follow. He did not like the Snow Witches. And just as Ivra and the Witches drifted out of sight, he thought he heard the Forest Children laughing. The sound came from the barn. So Eric ran to the door. It was a big sliding door, and now stood open on a crack just large enough for a child to slip through. Eric went in. The barn was tremendously big, a great dusty place full of the smell of hay. Ahead of him were two stalls, with a horse in one. But Eric was most interested in the empty stall, for it was from there the laughter seemed to come. He stood looking and listening, and then right down through the ceiling of the stall shot a child, and landed laughing and squealing in the hay in the manger. She sat up, saw Eric and stared. She was a little girl about his own age, freckle-faced, snub-nosed and red-haired. She had the jolliest, the nicest face in the world. Eric opened his mouth to say, "Hello," but kept it open, silent in amazement, for another child had shot through the ceiling and landed beside the girl. This was a boy. He was red-headed, too, freckle-faced and snub-nosed. He looked even jollier than the girl. Before Eric had closed his mouth on his amazement, "Whoop!" and down came another boy. This boy was red-haired, freckle-faced and snub-nosed, and he looked jollier than the other two put together, if that were possible, for his red hair curled in saucy, tight little ringlets, and his mouth was wide with smiles. It was this last one who said, "Hello, who are you?" "Eric,--who are you?" "Nora's grandchildren, of course. Come up. We're having sport." The three children ran across the barn to a ladder and scrambled up and disappeared through a trap door at the top. Eric followed. The attic was full of hay in mountains and little hills,--hay and hay and hay. He followed the children around the biggest mountain, through a tunnel--and there they vanished! He found the hole in the stable ceiling and looked down. Not very far below him was the manger full of hay and red-headed children. "Look out down there! Whoop!" cried Eric, and dropped, landing among them. Then the four laughed heartily together and ran across the barn again, up the ladder, around the hay mountain and dropped down the hole. They did that dozens of times until they were tired of it.