Two or three times while our minister was preaching a very interesting sermon which a boy could understand, my thoughts flew away like they were birds with wings, and for quite a while I didn't even know I was in church on account of I was far away in my thoughts. As you maybe know, our minister was Sylvia's father, and Sylvia was a very polite, kinda pretty girl with a good singing voice and always had her hair looking very neat and pretty with a ribbon or something on it like girls wear in their hair, and she was Big Jim's favorite girl. I was sitting beside Big Jim, and Dragonfly was beside me, with the rest of the Sugar Creek Gang in different places in the church, our parents not letting us all sit together if they could help it, on account of the minister got more attention himself if we sat in different places—not that any of us tried to be mischievous in church—in fact, we always had to try not to be.

Right that second Sylvia's kind-voiced pop was talking about how wonderful it was, when you knew you had done something wrong, and were sorry for it, you could pray right straight to the Lord Himself and confess your sins right straight to Him, and He would make your heart clean.... "The blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, will cleanse you from all sin, right that very minute," Sylvia's pop said, and it seemed like a wonderful thing to believe, and made me feel good all inside of me....

And then almost right away, he went on to say, quoting another verse from the Bible, "Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." I had learned that verse by heart once in a summer Bible school. And all of a sudden, my thoughts were flying away, and I was remembering Poetry's pet lamb, which you know about if you've read The Sugar Creek Gang in School, whose wool was NOT white one morning when the lamb fell down in a mud puddle, and I was remembering Poetry's funny poetry which was,

Also I was at that very minute reminded of another poem which I had seen yesterday, which was written on yellow paper and which had been pinned with a brown stick on the white stomach of a snow man.... That poem still didn't seem funny, and for some reason I decided I was going to try to be what is called a gentleman, and try to act like one in school, even if I didn't like my teacher.

I didn't hear any more of Sylvia's pop's sermon for a while, on account of I happened to look out the church window which didn't have stained glass like some of the churches in town did, and I saw somebody's barn just on the other side of the little cemetery, and there were a lot of pigeons flying around over the barn, and in the sky, right away I was remembering Shorty Long and Big Bob Till, and wondering where they were, and what they were doing.

I had a heavy feeling inside of me that they would maybe visit all of the barns of the Sugar Creek Gang's pops, and catch a lot of pigeons, and maybe they'd catch and kill the pretty brown and white pair of pigeons which had their nest in the cupola of our barn, and then what would happen to the baby pigeons?...

Pop didn't come in to church at all on account of deciding to stay with Mom, but he was there in the car right afterward, and all of us including Little Jim and Tom Till and Mrs. Long and Charlotte Ann, shook hands with a lot of people and climbed into our car and drove away. Pop and all of us were talking and listening as our car went purring down the road. We were just stopping at Shorty Long's house to let Mrs. Long out when Little Jim said to me in a half whisper, "Sylvia's pop certainly preached a good sermon. I thought that was why some houses didn't have as much snow on their roofs as others, and why barns always have more snow than houses that people live in. It was a good sermon."

"What?" I said to Little Jim, not remembering anything in the sermon about snow on people's houses or barns. Sylvia's pop must have said that when I was thinking about snowy white wool on Poetry's lamb—or else about a snow man standing at the bottom of Bumblebee hill....

Pretty soon we came to Tom Till's house. Pop had already told us the doctor had been there, and Mrs. Till didn't have pneumonia, only a bad chest cold.

Pop had gone to our house to get one of our battery radios so Mrs. Till could hear a good Christian program, and she was feeling a lot better. Pop also had told us that Bob had come home while Mom was taking care of Mrs. Till but he had gone away again. "Did he have any pigeons?" Little red-haired Tom asked, when Pop started to get out and go in with Tom and get Mom.

"About a dozen," Pop told him. "He put them in the pigeon cage out in the woodshed."

Right away I spoke up and said, "Were there any white ones?" remembering the beautiful white pigeon with pink eyes which had her nest up in the cupola of our barn, and whose big beautiful brown husband was so proud of her and always was cooing to her when they were on the roof of our barn and was always strutting around so very proud, with his neck all puffed out like he was very important.

"I don't know," Pop said, and I said, "Can I go and look, Tom?" and Tom said, "Sure, I'll go with you."

"Let me hold Charlotte Ann," Little Jim said, he liking to hold babies on his small lap, anyway.

Pop went in to get Mom, and Tom and I went into their woodshed to look through the chicken-yard wire cage at about fifteen very pretty pigeons.

All of a sudden, while I was looking, I got a hot feeling all inside of me, 'cause right there in front of my eyes with the other different colored pigeons, was a beautiful albino one—the prettiest snow white one I ever saw with pretty pink eyes, and I knew right away it was my favorite pigeon, old Snow-white herself, who had her nest in the cupola of our barn.

"There's my pigeon!" I cried to Little Tom, and when he asked me which one and I told him, he said, "Are you sure?"

"I'm positive," I said. "See that little brown spot just below the left pink eye. I'm going to get her out, and take her home."

Little Tom looked, and swallowed and got a very scared expression on his face, and started to say something, and then stopped.

"'Smatter?" I said, and he said, "Nothing, only--"

"Only what?" I asked him.

"Only—only Bob's got a terrible temper, and he's already mad at me."

Say, when I saw the scared expression on that little guy's face, I realized that if I let Snow-white out of that cage, Tom would maybe get a terrible beating-up-on from his big brother, and it'd be my fault. Just that minute, Pop and Mom came out of the side door of Tom's house, and it was time for us to go home. Mom was going to hurry with our own dinner, which had nearly all been cooked yesterday, and we were going to bring some nice chicken soup back in the car for Tom's mom's dinner, and also some chicken for Tom, himself.

I still didn't know who was coming to our house for dinner, and whoever did come would have to wait awhile, on account of Mom would have to finish preparing it. "Who's coming to our house for dinner?" I asked, and Mom said, as we all started down the road toward Little Jim's house, "A certain very fine gentleman named Little Jim Foote, of the Sugar Creek Gang,"—and was I ever glad? But as the car glided down the white road, I kept thinking of my pretty Snow-white in Bob Till's cage, and I knew that Bob would maybe kill her along with all the other pigeons and sell them at the Sugar Creek Poultry Shop....

Just that second, just as we were getting close to Little Jim Foote's house, Little Jim said, "Hey, Bill! Look! There goes a white pigeon, flying all by itself."

I looked out the car window, and sure enough there was, a snow white pigeon, with its white wings flapping, and it was diving along through the Sugar Creek sky right past our car and straight for Sugar Creek and in the direction of our house on the other side of the woods. All of a sudden I got a choked-up feeling in my throat, 'cause I just knew that was my very own Snow-white, and that Tom Till liked me so well he was going to run the risk of getting a terrible beating-up-on by his brother Bob, by opening their pigeon cage and letting Snow-white out so she could fly home.

For some reason all of a sudden, I liked Little red-haired Tom Till so well that I wished I could do something very wonderful for him and his sick mother. I just kept my eyes strained on the sky above Sugar Creek and the woods where I'd seen Snow-white disappear, when I heard Little Jim say to me beside me, "Nearly all the snow's melted off our house now."

I looked where he was looking, and he looked at me, and said surprised like, "'Smatter, Bill? You got tears in your eyes."

"Have I?" I said, "I didn't know it."

Tom Till really was a great little guy, I thought; one of my very best friends, and I remembered that before he had started coming to our Sunday School and had become a Christian, he had been one of the meanest boys I ever saw.

I shook my head, to knock the tears out of my eyes, like Little Jim does when for some reason or other he gets tears in his, and doesn't want anybody to know it, so instead of using his handkerchief to wipe them out, he just gives his head a quick little jerk or two, and if you happen to be looking at him, you can see the tears fly off in some direction or other.

"Well, here we are!" Pop said, stopping at Little Jim's house for a minute. "You'll probably want your sled. You and Bill'll want to coast on Bumblebee hill after dinner," which we would, and which, after dinner, we did.

One of the first things we did, though, even before we ate dinner, was to go upstairs to my room and both of us put on some old clothes to play in, Little Jim's mother having made him take some old clothes with him when we'd stopped at their house a little while ago.

Right away, we were down stairs again, and were on the way through the kitchen to the back door to dash out to the barn to see if Bob Till and Shorty Long had been there for sure, and also to see if Snow-white had come back and was on her nest up in the cupola, and also find out if her babies were cold or had frozen or something, on account of they didn't have enough feathers on them to keep them warm.

Mom stopped me at the door, though, saying, "Bill, if you like, you may wash your hands and finish setting the table—put the bread on, and pour a glass of water for everyone, and milk for you and Jim."

I was surprised at Mom calling Little Jim just Jim, but I sorta felt it was because she thought it made Little Jim sound bigger than he was, and Mom knew it would make him feel good, Mom being a very smart person and knew how to make boys like her.

"Anything I can do?" Little Jim asked Mom politely. Mom let him pour the water into the glasses for me, and when we finished helping her, she said we could go out to the barn if we wanted to, but to be ready to come running as soon as she called us, which we probably would be on account of the oven was open right that minute and I could smell the baked chicken and knew that it was going to be a wonderful dinner.

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"Hi, Mixy!" Little Jim said to our black and white cat which was lying in a cozy nest of her own at the bottom of the ladder which went up to our haymow. Little Jim stooped down to pet her, and she lifted her head without standing up and rubbed the sides of her pretty black and white face against his small hand, and mewed lazily, with half-closed blinking eyes.

I could hardly wait till we got up in the haymow and could climb up Pop's new ladder to the cupola to see if Snow-white was home again, so I started to go up the first ladder first, noticing that there was dirt on the ladder that might have been made by somebody with boots or shoes on that had dirty snow on them, and I knew Bob Till and Shorty Long had been there. How many pigeons had they caught? I wondered, and felt an angry feeling inside of me, 'cause if there was anything the boys of the Sugar Creek Gang didn't do, it was we didn't go into anybody's barn and catch pigeons without the farmer asking us to, or without us first asking the farmer if we could.

Right that minute, while Little Jim was stroking Mixy, and I had my hand and one foot on the ladder ready to start up, I heard Pop's voice calling from somewhere up in the haymow, and saying to us. "Bill! Are you down there?"

"Yeah," I yelled back up to him, "Little Jim and I are both here. We're coming up!" Pop's voice had a worried sound in it, and also sounded like maybe I had done something I shouldn't have, or else had maybe left something undone which I should have done.

Then Pop's voice called down to us, and this time it sounded even more like I thought it had, when Pop said, "Where'd you put my new ladder? I can't find it anywhere."

New ladder! I thought, and wondered, What on earth! Why just yesterday I'd used it to climb up to Snow-white's nest and had left it right there, with the top of it resting on the beam on the south side of the cupola.

"It's right there!" I yelled up to Pop, "Right there in the center of the haymow, going up into the cupola."

"It IS not!" Pop yelled back down to me, "and I've looked all over the haymow for it."

I looked at Little Jim, and he was still stooped over stroking Mixy who was standing up now and stretching herself and reaching up with her front claws and doing some kind of monkey-business with Little Jim's trousers, taking hold, and letting go, and taking hold, and letting go, and acting very contented.

Then I went lickety-sizzle up the ladder to the haymow and sure enough Pop was right! The pretty new ladder which Pop had bought and which I'd left right where I'd told Pop I'd left it, was gone.

"I left it right here," I said to Pop, and then I had a queer feeling inside of me, as I thought about two boys whose names you already know and wondered if they had stolen it. There wasn't a sign of the ladder anywhere in the whole haymow, and I was looking in every direction.

"'Smatter?" Little Jim asked, when his head appeared at the top of the ladder beside where I was standing, and he looked up at my and Pop's astonished faces.

"Somebody's stolen our ladder," I said, "a brand new one Pop just bought last week."

"Stolen it?" Little Jim asked, and he had a puzzled expression on his face, and I knew what he was going to say before he said it, and it was, "Are you sure?" You know, Little Jim always had a hard time believing anybody was bad, or would do anything wrong, on account of he hardly ever did anything wrong himself, and, also, 'cause he liked everybody. So when he said, "Are you sure?" Pop said, "No, we're not sure, till Bill has tried first to remember if maybe he moved it somewhere else."

I looked all around in a quick circle at the haymow, and I thought that if Bob Till and Shorty Long had been there, they might have hidden it under some hay just for meanness, so I got a pitch fork and started to jab it into the hay all around in different places in the haymow, and Pop looked in a tunnel under a long beam, and also we all looked down stairs and all around. Once I looked up into the cupola, and had a half-glad feeling in my heart when I saw Snow-white's white head peeking out over the edge of the beam she had her nest on, like she had just come back, and was wondering "What on earth" anybody wanted with a ladder anyway, she not needing any herself.

Just then we heard Mom calling for dinner, and we had to go, all of us being very hungry. I knew Pop was having a hard time believing me, that I hadn't moved the ladder, on account of many a time Pop had missed something around the farm and later he or I or somebody had found it where I'd been using it or playing with it, in some place I'd forgotten all about.

But there wasn't any use to look for it. It was gone, and not a one of us knew where—only I was absolutely sure that Bob Till and Shorty Long had hidden it somewhere. I told Mom and Pop what I thought had happened, and we all talked it over pretty excitedly at the dinner table.

After dinner we all looked again, looking all around the barn, inside and out, and also jabbing forks and shovels in the biggest piles of snow around the barn, to see if maybe it had been covered up with snow, and still we couldn't find it. Pop was pretty mad, also, on account of about six of our pigeons were missing, and it looked like there had been somebody jumping and running all over the alfalfa hay which we fed to our cows. "How would YOU like to eat a piece of pie that some boy's dirty boots had walked all over?" Pop asked. That tickled Little Jim, and he giggled.

Pretty soon Mom and Pop said Little Jim and I could go over to Poetry's house if we wanted to, and we could play in Poetry's nice new basement.

It was while we were at Poetry's house that we saw the ladder, and you'd never guess in the world where it was, and most certainly you'd never guess in the world all the excitement we were going to get mixed up in before the afternoon was over.

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