It was so nice sitting perched on the hay that neither was in a hurry to move. I believe they quite forgot about the time, until at last they heard Miss Frazer's voice in the distance bidding good-bye to Mrs. Brand. "We shall have to go," groaned Cicely. "What a nuisance! I could stay here for hours." "So could I," said Lindsay, getting up with a yawn, and brushing loose stalks from her dress. "Let us jump down on the other side of the hay." I do not know why it should have occurred to Lindsay to get off the stack by the back instead of the front. If they had gone out of the barn by the way they came, they could have overtaken Miss Frazer in a moment, and the adventure which followed would never have happened at all. As it was, fate decreed that Lindsay, in her flying leap through the dusk, should knock her shins against something decidedly hard. She stood rubbing them ruefully, and put out her hand to feel what had been the cause of her bruises. It was a ladder, standing against the wall, and through the gloom of the barn she could just distinguish its upper end, which seemed to communicate with a doorway in the angle of the roof. This looked attractive. She pointed it out at once to Cicely. "Where does it lead, do you think?" asked the latter. "To some granary above, I expect. I wonder what's up there! Shall we go and explore?" Without even waiting for an answer, Lindsay had begun to ascend, and as she was six rungs up before Cicely ventured a half-hearted remonstrance, she did not see fit to come down again. "Oh! we shan't be a minute," she declared. "Miss Frazer will wait for us in the wood, and we can run all the way from the farm." Where Lindsay went Cicely always felt bound to follow; accordingly, she clambered up the ladder behind her friend, and in due course both arrived at the top. As Lindsay had supposed, they found a granary half-filled with sacks of corn and a pile of loose barley. A door at the farther end appeared to open on to a flight of steps leading outside, while opposite was a small lattice window overlooking the fields. "There's really nothing to see," said Cicely. "It was hardly worth while coming, after all." "We might go out through that door, instead of climbing down the ladder again," suggested Lindsay, beginning to walk round the sacks. "Why, look! Somebody has left his lunch here." On the top of the barley was a tin can, and also a red cotton pocket-handkerchief, evidently containing slices of bread. From sheer idle curiosity Lindsay seized them, and showed them laughingly to Cicely. "Will you have some afternoon tea?" she exclaimed in joke. At that moment she was startled by a low growl behind her. From a corner of the room sprang a collie dog that, unobserved by them, had been lying among the sacks, and keeping a watch over its master's property. Lindsay promptly replaced the tin and the handkerchief on the barley. "Good dog! Poor fellow!" she said encouragingly, holding out her hand.