came in sight of the barn she beheld the clothes basket dangling
about half-way to the roof, swinging this way and that from one end of a
rope.

On the other end of the rope Russ and Laddie were pulling, while in the
clothes basket, his little face peering over the side, was Mun Bun.

"What are you doing? Let him down!" cried Mother Bunker, for Mun Bun was
crying.

"We can't get him down!" shouted Russ. "The balloon won't come down!"

"Balloon? I don't see any balloon!" cried Mrs. Bunker. She thought,
perhaps, as sometimes did happen, a balloonist from a neighboring
fairground might have gone up, giving an exhibition as was often the
case in the Fall. But all the balloons she saw were the toys Russ and
Laddie had tied to the fence.

"Where is the balloon, and what do you mean by pulling Mun Bun up in the
basket that way?" she asked.

"Mun Bun's in the balloon!" cried Russ.

"We got him up, but we can't get him down," added Laddie. "The rope's
stuck."

And that is just what had happened. I think you can guess the kind of
game Russ and Laddie had been playing when the accident happened? They
had tied the clothes basket to the rope running over the wheel. The
pulley had been used when Mr. Bunker kept a horse, for pulling the hay
up from the ground to the second story of the barn.

Then, with the basket tied to the rope, Laddie and Russ had taken turns
pulling one another up. The rope went around several pulleys, or wheels,
instead of one, and this made it easy for even a small boy, by pulling
on the loose end, to lift up quite a weight. So it was not hard for Russ
to pull Laddie in the basket up to the little door of the hay-loft.
Laddie could not have pulled Russ up, if Russ, himself, had not taken
hold of the rope and pulled also. But they had lots of good times, and
they pretended they were going up and down in a balloon.

Then along came Mun Bun.

"I want to play, too!" he cried.

"We'll pull him up!" said Russ. "He's light and little, and we can pull
him up fast!"

So Mun Bun got into the clothes basket, and Russ and Laddie, hauling on
the rope, pulled him up and let him come down quite swiftly.

"Oh, it's fun!" laughed Mun Bun. "I like the balloon!"

And it was fun, until the accident happened. Then, in some way, the rope
became caught in one of the wheels, and when Mun Bun was half-way
between the ground and the second story of the barn, there he stuck!

"We'd better holler for mother!" said Lad