."

"Well," said Nathan, "we will."

The boys accordingly began to look about the barn for a place to hide.
It was a large barn, with stalls for oxen and cows, and cribs for
horses, and one or two calf-pens. Then there was a granary in one
corner, and a tool-room near it, and lofts and scaffolds above. The boys
found plenty of places to hide in, and it took them some time to decide
which to choose. At last, they found a good warm place, by some bundles
of wheat straw, up in the barn chamber; and they amused themselves by
choosing out large straws, and making tubes of them to blow through.
They called them their _bellows_.

They entirely forgot that they were hid from Jonas, for nearly half an
hour; and then Rollo proposed that they should creep softly down, and
see what Jonas was about. So they went down stairs on tiptoe; Rollo
first, and Nathan following. They crept softly along to the door leading
out into the shed, through which they had to pass in order to get to
the shop; and Rollo was going to open this softly, when, to his
surprise, he found it fastened.

"Why, Nathan," said he, "this door is fastened."

"How came it fastened?" said Nathan.

"I don't know," said Rollo, "unless Jonas fastened it. I think he must
have finished his work, and gone into the house; and so he has fastened
this door."

"And now he won't come and find us," said Nathan.

"No," said Rollo, "and we must go out the front door. And I don't care
much," he continued, "for it is pretty near dinner time."

The boys then went back to the front door of the barn, and, to their
surprise and alarm, found that fastened too.

"What shall we do?" said Rollo; "Jonas has fastened us in." As Rollo
said this, his face assumed an expression of great solicitude, and
Nathan began to cry.

"Don't cry, Nathan," said he; "we can find some way to get out. But I
don't see, I confess, what made Jonas lock us in."

The truth was, that Jonas did not know that the boys were in the barn
when he fastened it up. As they did not come back after they had gone to
answer the bell, he supposed that they had gone into the house; and when
he was ready to come in himself, he shut and fastened the back doors of
the barn, as he usually did when he left the shop. He then came around
to the front barn door, and although that was on the sheltered side, so
that the wind did not blow in, he thought it possible that the wind
might change, and so drive the snow in upon the ba