ll, right under the roof, there was a little window that always
stood open. Through that window I meant to go to get Carolus. There was
an old ladder in our barn; I got Peter and Karsten to carry it down the
hill and set it up under the window. Both Peter and Karsten wanted to
climb up, but I said no; such a difficult undertaking no one but myself
could manage.

It was about nine o'clock in the evening and growing dark. I climbed the
ladder and got to the top round all right. But whether it was that the
ladder was rotten or that Peter and Karsten let go of it,--I had no
sooner got hold of the window-sill and dragged myself in than down fell
the ladder, breaking all to pieces as it fell.

So there I was in a pretty fix! And how Karsten and Peter laughed down
below! I was furiously angry with them, especially at the way Peter
laughed. When Peter laughs it is just as if some one had suddenly
tickled him in the stomach; he doubles himself together, twists like a
worm, and laughs without making a sound. But Karsten roared at the top
of his voice.

"Will you stop your laughing, Karsten? You will betray me making such a
noise."

"How will you get down again?"

"Oh, I'll jump down." It was certainly ten or twelve feet to the ground.
"Now I am going in after Carolus; I'll drop him down from here, and you
must be sure to catch him."

I groped my way down the half-dark stairway from the loft, stumbled
along, in the pitch-black darkness of the shed, over a chopping-block
and a heap of shavings, and at last got to the part of the wood-shed
where the hens were. I opened the door softly and fumbled with my hand
along the roost they were sitting on. But, O dear! O dear! such a
squawking and screeching! You haven't the least idea how Madam Land's
hens could squawk. It was exactly as if I were murdering them all at
once. Outside of the wall I could hear Karsten fairly howling with
laughter. I kept fumbling around in the dark, for I wanted to find
Carolus. I think I got hold of every single hen; all their beaks were
stretched wide, letting out one and the same piercing squawk.

[Illustration: And how Karsten and Peter laughed down below!--_Page
109._]

Then I heard the door of Madam Land's kitchen thrown open, and footsteps
across the yard--then Madam Land's voice, "Come with your stick, Land,
there are thieves in the hen-house." The door of the wood-shed was
opened and Madam Land's maid burst in and saw me. "It is the judge's