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astonishment at the unwonted sight of visitors to the farm, and ran to call her mistress to the scene.
    "You may wait for me here, girls, while I do my business with Mrs. Brand," said Miss Frazer; "or if you like you may walk back to the stile, and I will overtake you in the wood."
    Mrs. Brand insisted that Miss Frazer should come into the best parlour to transact her errand, so, left alone, the girls began slowly to retrace their steps towards the copse.
    "I wonder how long she'll be," said Lindsay, who with Cicely had lingered a little behind.
    "I believe she has to pay a bill and order more butter and eggs and things, so I don't expect we shall see her for five or ten minutes at least," replied Cicely.
    "Then there'll be just time to run round the farm. I want to peep inside those barns, and see what is at the other side of those haystacks. It looks interesting. Come along! The dairymaid is busy milking, and won't see us, and I don't suppose it matters if she does. We'll soon run after the others."
    Feeling rather adventurous, the pair fled away down the yard, and dived through an open doorway into the depths of a big barn. How fragrant it smelled--such a delicious, sweet scent was in the air! Surely it must come from that great heap of hay in the corner. The girls ran across, and jumping on to the pile, were soon burying each other with armfuls of the hay, and scooping out nests to sit in. It was dark inside the barn--the beautiful brown gloom that one sees only in old castles or churches, or ancient buildings, and is quite different from the black of ordinary darkness. Through the open door came just one shaft of sunshine, in which the specks of dust seemed to float and flutter like living things. Overhead the great beams of the roof were lost in dim obscurity; very old and rough they were, and covered with a mass of cobwebs, among which Cicely declared she could see bats hanging head downwards, with folded wings, though Lindsay said it was all her imagination.
    It was so nice sitting perched on the hay that neither was in a hurry to move. I believe they quite forgot about the time, until at last they heard Miss Frazer's voice in the distance bidding good-bye to Mrs. Brand.
    "We shall have to go," groaned Cicely. "What a nuisance! I could stay here for hours."
    "So could I," said Lindsay, getting up with a yawn, and brushing loose stalks from her dress. "Let us jump down on the other side of the hay."
    I do not know why it should have occurred to Lindsay to get off the stack by the back instead of the front. If they had gone out of the barn by the way they came, they could have overtaken Miss Frazer in a moment, and the adventure which followed would never have happened at all. As it was, fate decreed that Lindsay, in her flying leap through the dusk, should knock her shins against something decidedly hard. She stood rubbing them ruefully, and put out her hand to feel what had been the cause of her bruises. It was a ladder, standing against the wall, and through the gloom of the barn she could just distinguish its upper end, which seemed to communicate with a doorway in the angle of the roof. This looked attractive. She pointed it out at once to Cicely.
    "Where does it lead, do you think?" asked the latter.
    "To some granary above, I expect. I wonder what's up there! Shall we go and explore?"
    Without even waiting for an answer, Lindsay had begun to ascend, and as she was six rungs up before Cicely ventured a half-hearted remonstrance, she did not see fit to come down again.
    "Oh! we shan't be a minute," she declared. "Miss Frazer will wait for us in the wood, and we can run all the way from the farm."
    Where Lindsay went Cicely always felt bound to follow; accordingly, she clambered up the ladder behind her friend, and in due course both arrived at the top. As Lindsay had supposed, they found a granary half-filled with sacks of corn and a pile of loose barley. A door at the farther end appeared to open on to a flight of