-shoed boys through
her entry (just washed) if they come to look for a ball, even if it
has broken a pane of glass on its way. So the boys got a ladder from
the Pentzes', and put it up at one of the windows where the blind was
broken. Jack went up the ladder. The slat was off, but not in the right
place to open the window. There could not be any harm in breaking off
another; then he could reach the middle of the sash and pull up the
window. No; it was fastened inside. John Stebbins tried, but it was of
no use.

"It would not help if we broke the window by the fastening," said John;
"for the shutters are closed inside with old-fashioned inside shutters."

Here was the time to ask for the key. They must have the key to find
that ball, and the boys trudged back to meet Sam just going home from
the Pentzes'.

But Sam refused to ask for the key again, He didn't want to bother his
father so soon, and he didn't want the bother himself. He had his new
"Caesar" lesson to study; to-morrow, after school, he and Jonas would
look round at the house, and find some way to recover the ball, for even
the stern and studious Sam knew the value of a ball.

So Thursday noon the boys all hurried up to the Wilson house,--Sam,
Jonas, and all. They examined it on every side. They came back to the
hole where the ball was lost.

"There's the cold-air box," said Jonas. "Could not Dick crawl in?"

Now, Dick was a very small pattern of a boy, indeed, to be still a boy.
Really he might crawl into the cold-air box. He tried it! He did get in!
He had to squeeze through one part, but worked his way down fairly into
the cellar, and screamed out with triumph that he had found the ball
close by the hole! But how was Dick to get out again? He declared he
could never scramble up. He slipped back as fast as he tried. He would
look for the cellar stairs, only it was awful dark except just by the
hole. He had a match in his pocket. Jack ran to the Pentzes' and got a
candle, and they rolled it in to Dick, and waited anxiously to see where
he would turn up next. They heard him, before long, pounding at a door
round the corner of the house. He had found the cellar stairs, and a
door with bolts and a great rusty key, which he succeeded in turning.
The boys pulled at the door and it opened; and there stood Dick with the
ball in one hand, picking up the candle with the other!

What a chance to enter the house! Down the cellar stairs, up into the
attics! Stran