She was a stirring kind of girl, anyhow, and he was a little afraid of her, but when he came downstairs again, she was in the back doorway, calling out: “Rodney! Rodney!--You must come over to our house, right away! Billy’s down in our cellar and we can’t get him out. He’s drank up all the milk and he’s eaten all the vegetables. He tried to butt me and mother, too.” “How did he get there!” exclaimed Rodney, setting out at once. “The old rascal!” “The cellar was shut up, all night,” she said, “and the things were put into it to keep them safe, and when we went down, this morning, there was Billy, ready to fight us.” “He’s the worst old goat!” said Rodney, “and he doesn’t belong to me, anyhow.” He went in a hurry, however, and in a few minutes he began to understand the matter. The cellar stairs went down from a door opening into the hall. “That was open when you and I went through, yesterday,” said Rodney to Millie. “He just followed us. Why, it’s through this hall he gets out into the street, sometimes. He watches till the door’s open. I guess he got into my room through that front window.” That was not all, if Rodney had but known the working of the mind of a goat. Having once gone downstairs successfully, in his own house, the next time he saw stairs before him, they seemed to promise to let him out into liberty, and so he was now down in the Kirby cellar, a very much bewildered goat. His plans had all gone wrong and he was glad to have his own best friend take him by the horns and lead him upstairs again. “There he goes!” shouted Millie, but Rodney was just then listening ruefully to Mrs. Kirby’s energetic account of all the robbery and other mischief Billy had accomplished in her cellar. He was glad enough to get away homeward and carry an account of Billy’s transactions to Pat the carpenter, up on the new avenue. “The baste!” exclaimed Patrick. “But thim will climb anywhere.--Luk at that? It’s a big hole for wan dure but it’s the good job I’m makin.” “I can paint it,” said Rod. “I guess I can paint all the side of the house. ’Twon’t take much, all that’s above the street.--Then if I could get the garden ploughed----” “Why not?” exclaimed Pat. “Sure, I know a man wid a small horse and a plough of his own. If Billy can come through Kirby’s hall, why can’t a pony? I’ll see to that same.” It was a ray of hope for Rod, although he doubted if Mrs. Kirby would let a horse of any kind go through her house. He said he would see her about it, but what he really meant was that he would speak to Millie. That was a long day to quite a number of people. Nowhere, however, was there more of it than among some of the boys who spent part of its afternoon in a long, hard drill on the House of Refuge parade-ground. Most of them marched pretty well, but there were several middle-sized boys, in the third company from the front, who had to be spoken to, several times, for the way they missed step.