THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 99 



when they couldn't do that, they turned sloping, hump- 

 backed roofs toward tne northeast to shed 'the snow 

 and tempt the wind in its wild moods to play leap- 

 frog and thus pass over. 



Such a roof as this has the house at the next farm, 

 and judging by the location of the old hay barn, and the 

 lay of the road, it must have once belonged to this ad- 

 joining property rather than to ours. 



Slowly we circled the knoll, dropped into the hollow, 

 and stood upon the uneven floor of wide chestnut planks 

 that was to be our camp. Other lodgers had this barn 

 besides ourselves and, unlike ourselves, hereditary ten- 

 ants. Swallows of steel-blue wings hung their nests 

 in a whispering colony against the beams, a pair of gray 

 squirrels arched their tails at us and chattering whisked 

 up aloft, where they evidently have a family in the dilapi- 

 dated pigeon cote, while among some cornstalks and 

 other litter in the low earth cellar beneath we could 

 hear the rustling doubtless bom of the swift little feet 

 of mice. (Yes, I know that it is a feminine quality 

 lacking in me, but I have never yet been able to conjure 

 up any species of fear in connection with these playful 

 little rodents.) 



The cots, table, chairs, and screens were as I had 

 placed them several days ago ; but it was not the interior 



