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“Oh! Oh!” cried Archie. “Look at your Doll! She went down just like my Elephant!”

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” wailed Elsie. “Where has she gone?”

“Down into the oat bin on the first floor,” explained Archie. “The oats go from this big bin to the little bin where Jake takes them out to give to the horses. Don’t cry, Elsie. We’ll get your Doll back.”

Archie had almost been going to cry himself when he saw his Elephant being buried in the rushing stream of oats. But when he heard his sister’s sobs he made up his mind to be brave and try to help her.

Archie was so excited that he still held up the sliding door of the oat bin, and the grains kept on sliding down the chute, carrying with them the Elephant and Doll, though now the toys were not in sight.

“Come on downstairs and get my Doll!” begged Elsie, tugging at her brother’s hand. “Come on and get your Elephant and my Doll.”

“Yes, we’d better do that,” Archie agreed.

Then he saw that he was still holding open the little door in the oat bin, so that pecks and bushels of the grains were still sliding down the chute.

“I’d better close that, or the Elephant and the Doll will be buried away down under so many oats they’ll never get out,” said the little boy.

He let go the handle that they had pulled to raise the door, and it dropped shut, thus preventing any more oats from sliding down the chute. Then he took Elsie’s hand and hurried toward the stairs that led to the lower floor of the barn.

Meanwhile, as you have guessed, the Elephant and the Doll were not having a very good time. At first, when the Elephant felt himself fall in with the sliding oats, he did not know what had happened.

“I wonder what sort of adventure this is!” thought the Elephant. “It’s almost as bad as being pitched out into a snow drift, though I’m glad it isn’t cold. These oats are very scratchy, though, and they make me want to sneeze. But where am I going?”

The Elephant did not know. All he could tell was that he was being hurried along in the dark with a lot of oats, for it was dark inside the grain chute.

Down, down, down went the Elephant, just as he had gone up, up, up on the rope.

“Where shall I land?” thought the Elephant.

A moment later he found out, for he was shot from the chute into the almost empty grain bin on the lower floor. Out of the chute tumbled the Elephant, and he was very glad to be in an open space once more.

“But it is almost as dark as it was before,” he said. A little light came from the top of the bin which did not close tightly, but it was only a little light.

But the Elephant’s troubles were not over. For no sooner had he been slid clear of the chute, landing on his feet, very luckily, than more oats poured out, for Archie was still holding open the door of the grain bin up above. So many oats came sliding down the chute that they rose all around the Elephant like rising water around a rock. The oats rose to his knees, to his stomach, where they tickled him a little, and then began to rise over his back.

“Oh!” he trumpeted, raising his trunk as high as he could. “I am going to be covered from sight in the oats!”

And then, when the oats almost covered his eyes, he had a glimpse of the Doll coming down the chute, in a shower of oats.

“Oh, you poor child!” called the Elephant.

“Yes, isn’t this terrible!” exclaimed the Doll. “Oh, how are we ever going to get out?”

The Elephant tried to answer, but now the oats rose over his mouth and he could not speak. Only the top of his head and the tip of his trunk stuck out above the oats.