Three Young Knights | Page 8

how easy it would be to conjure up our dear old grandmothers in their great scoop bonnets, and grandfathers with their high coat collars coming nearly to their bald crowns! And the Deacon's Seat under the pulpit--how easy to make believe the deacons in claw-hammer coats and queer frilled shirt bosoms!
The people Jot and Kent saw were ordinary, modern people, and their modern clothes looked oddly out of date against the quaint old setting. Jot thought with a twinge of sympathy how hard the seats must feel, and how shoulders must ache against the perfectly straight-up-and-down backs. He felt a sudden pity for his great-grandmother and great-uncles and aunts.
This especial old church, box-like and unchurchly without and ancient within, was rarely used for worship except in the summer months. Then there were services in it as often as a minister could be found to conduct them. The three young adventurers had stumbled upon it in the dark and overslept out of sheer physical weariness. It was up in one of the old choir pews in the high gallery they had wakened--or Jot had wakened--to the strains of the beautiful hymn his mother loved.
The whole explanation was simple enough when it was explained. Kent and Jot worked it out slowly in their own minds.
Meanwhile Old Tilly slept on, and the sermon came to an end. There was another hymn and then the benediction. The people dispersed slowly, and once more the big house was deserted.
Then Jot woke Old Tilly. "I say," he cried, "I say, old fellow, wake up!"
"Yes, I'm coming in a minute!" muttered Old Tilly.
"You'll be late for church," remarked Kent dryly, with a wink at Jot.
Old Tilly stirred and rose on his elbow. Then he gave a bewildered look around him.
"You're in church. Didn't you promise mother you'd take us to church?"
"Yes."
"But you slept all through the service," said Kent, "and I shall tell mother so!"
"Kent Eddy, what are you trying to get at? How did we get here, anyhow?" said Old Tilly, rising cautiously; and then, as he looked down on the empty room below, standing to his full height, he said. "Well, if I ever!" a laugh breaking through his white teeth. "I should say we had been in church!" he added. "Why didn't you fellows wake me up? What did the folks think?"
"Oh, they only saw the two good boys sitting on the seat facing them! We didn't say we had another one smuggled in under beside us. But my! You did rap the seat awfully once with your elbow!"
"Well, I know one thing: my shoulder aches from lying on that narrow seat so long," said Old Tilly. "I say, let's go down to the wheels and the grub. I'm half starved!"
"All right," said Kent in rather a subdued way. The morning service had stolen pleasingly through him, and somehow it seemed to the little lad as though their ship had been guided into a wonderfully quiet harbor. And now he followed his brothers down the narrow stairs that they had so innocently groped their way up in darkness the night before. The three had agreed to leave the church and partake of the lunch that was in the baskets on the wheels, but now they found doing so not as easy of accomplishment as they had at first thought. When they tried the outer door they found to their dismay that it was locked. Old Tilly would not believe Kent, and he pushed the latter's hand off the door knob rather impatiently. "Let me get hold of it!"
But, rattle the door as he might, he could not stir the rusty lock.
"Well, we're locked in, that's sure!" said Kent, looking almost dismayed.
CHAPTER V.
"I guess you're right, Jotham," Old Tilly said.
"But what in the world did they go and lock up for, when we got in just as easy as pie last night?" exclaimed Kent, disgustedly.
"Oh, ask something easy!" Jot cried. "What I want to know is, how we're going to get on the other side o' that door."
The care-taker, if one could call him that, of the old meeting-house, had taken it into his head to take care of it!--or it may have been that the key chanced to be in his pocket, convenient. At all events, the door was securely fastened. The three boys reluctantly gave up the attempt to force it.
"Windows!" Kent suddenly exclaimed, and they all laughed foolishly. They had not thought of the windows.
"That's a good joke on the Eddy boys!" Old Tilly said. "We sha'n't hear the last of it if anybody lets on to father."
"Better wait till we're on the other side of the windows!" advised Kent. "Maybe it isn't a joke."
There were windows enough. They were ranged in monotonous rows on all sides of the church, above and