im Leonard was to come to the barn the next morning to
help him start, and should not find him there, Pony did not know what he
would do. Jim Leonard would tell all the fellows, and Pony would never
hear the last of it. That was the way it seemed to him, but his mind felt
all fuzzy, and he could not think very clearly about it.

When his mother finished up her work in the kitchen he took the lantern
from the nail and slipped up the back stairs to his little room, and then,
after he heard his sisters going to bed and his father and mother talking
together quietly, he lit the lantern and stole out to the barn with it.
Nobody noticed him, and he got safely inside the barn. He used to like to
carry the lantern very much, because it made the shadows of his legs, when
he walked, go like scissors-blades, and that was fun; but that night it
did not cheer him up, and it seemed as if nothing could cheer him up
again. When Trip first saw him come out into the woodshed with the lantern
he jumped up and pawed Pony and licked the lantern, he was so glad, but
when Pony went towards the barn Trip stopped following him and went back
into the wood-house very sadly. Pony would have given almost anything to
have Trip come with him, only, as Jim Leonard said, Trip would whine or
bark, or something, and then Pony would be found out and kept from running
off.

The more he wanted to be kept from running off the more he knew he must
not try to be, and he let Trip go back when he would have so gladly helped
him up into the hay-loft and slept with him there. He would not have been
afraid with Trip, and now he found that he was dreadfully afraid. The
lantern-light was a charm against ghosts, but not against rats, and the
first thing Pony knew when he got into the barn a rat ran across his foot.
Trip would have kept the rats off. They seemed to just swarm in the loft
when Pony got up there, and after he hung the lantern on a nail and lay
down in the hay they did not mind him at all. They played all around, and
two of them got up on their hind legs once and fought, or else danced,
Pony could not tell which. He could not sleep, and after a while he felt
the tears coming and he began to cry, and he kept sobbing, and could not
stop himself.

When Pony's mother was ready to go to bed she said to Pony's father: "Did
Pony say good-night to you?" and when he said no, she said, "But he must
have gone to bed," and she ran up the stairs to see. She came down