still there.

“Good! It’s there!” she exclaimed to herself the next moment.

Without a thought about the extreme heat she ran down the street to the corner. As she gazed up at the high, crude scaffold made of peeled poles fastened together, a slight tinge of fear passed over her. How high it looked! And what a blank wall it was fastened on! There wasn’t a sign of a window or opening—not even a ledge—to break the smooth, regular surface of the wall.

“That’s the crudest scaffold I’ve ever laid eyes on,” she thought, as she examined the hardwood poles which were fastened to the wall in several places by wooden pegs.

Near the top of the poles she noticed that there was a rough platform from which dangled a long rope with a bucket attached to the end.

“I wonder how the workmen get up to that platform,” she thought.

Going over to the other side of the scaffold she discovered that deep notches had been cut at regular intervals in one of the poles, for footholds. “So this is the way they get up! These notches look awfully far apart, though. I wonder if I could reach them.”

Carefully she pulled herself up to the first notch, and then on to the second and third.

“Sure, I can climb this!” she exulted. “This is more fun than I’ve had in a long time.”

Up she climbed to the platform and then scrambled over onto it.

While she was sitting there resting a moment, she was busily examining the rest of the scaffold to see if she could reach the top of the building. She noticed that, although there were no more notches cut in the pole, there was a crosspiece near the top to hold the scaffold in position against the building.

“If I can only reach that crosspiece, I know I can climb up on the roof,” she told herself.

Cautiously she rose and, wrapping her legs and arms around the pole, slowly pulled herself up to the crosspiece; then balancing herself on it she climbed over the edge of the roof.

However, hot as she was, she knew that she had no time to cool off, since the siesta hour was almost over, and the girls would soon be awake.

“I must not get caught again,” she told herself.

She looked hastily around the curious roof, 

 Prev. P 31/109 next