he drew within sight of the log
cabin on the slope of the ravine, he heard Old Daddy piping pacifically
to the guests about "my son," and Jonas Creyshaw's jolly laughter.

The moon was golden now; Si could see its brilliant shafts of light
strike aslant upon the smooth surface of the cliff that formed the
opposite side of Old Daddy's Window. He stopped short in the deep shadow
of the more rugged crag. The vines and bushes that draped its many
jagged ledges dripped with dew. The boughs of an old oak, which grew
close by, swayed gently in the breeze. Hidden by its huge hole, Si cast
an apprehensive glance toward the house where his elders sat.

Certainly no one was thinking of him now.

"This air my chance fur that young ow_el_--ef ever," he said to himself.

The owl's nest was in the hollow of the tree. The trunk was far too
bulky to admit of climbing, and the lowest branches were well out of the
boy's reach. Some thirty feet from the ground, however, one of the
boughs touched the crag. By clambering up its rugged, irregular ledges,
making a zigzag across its whole breadth to the right and then a similar
zigzag to the left, Si might gain a position which would enable him to
clutch this bough of the tree. Thence he could scramble along to the
owl's stronghold.

He hesitated. He knew his elders would disapprove of so reckless an
undertaking as climbing about Old Daddy's Window, for in venturing
toward its outer verge, a false step, a crumbling ledge, the snapping of
a vine, would fling him down the sheer precipice into the depths below.

His hankering for a pet owl had nevertheless brought him here more than
once. It was only yesterday evening--before he had heard of the ghost's
appearance, however--that he had made his last futile attempt.

He looked up doubtfully. "I ain't ez strong ez--ez some folks," he
admitted.

"But then, come ter think of it," he argued astutely, "I don't weigh
nuthin' sca'cely, an' thar ain't much of me ter hev ter haul up thar."

He flung off his hat, he laid his wiry hands upon the wild grape-vines,
he felt with his bare feet for the familiar niches and jagged edges, and
up he went, working steadily to the right, across the broad face of the
cliff.

Its heavy shadow concealed him from view. Only one ledge, at the extreme
verge of the crag, jutted out into the full moonbeams. But this, by
reason of the intervening bushes and vines, could not be seen by those
who sat in the cabin porch