“Did you kick somethin’ over?” says I.
“Oh no,” says he. “It j-just went for an evenin’ stroll all by itself. Calc’late it was the sheet-iron wash-tub settin’ here g-gossipin’ with the boiler,” says he.
“And Jethro’ll be here in a second gossipin’ with us,” says I.
We lighted a match then. It was time to hustle about as fast as we could hustle, and you can’t do that when it’s so dark you can’t pinch your own nose and feel it, even if you could find your nose to pinch.
When the light flared up we found we were half-way down the stairs, and that the stairs went between two brick walls and didn’t go right into the big cellar, but into a kind of little hall, and that there was a door about six feet from the bottom step. That led into the cellar.
We scooted for the door.
“G-good heavy door,” says Mark. “Slam her s-shut.”
I did, not worrying much about noise now, and then we both lighted matches to see what chances was standing around offering themselves to a couple of boys who wished they was off in Africa or at the North Pole instead of in Mr. Wigglesworth’s cellar.
The room we were in was a big one, the whole width of the house. Toward the front of the house was a brick wall, with doors in it that led to other parts of the cellar. The door we came through was the only one into the room from the back.
“B-b-barricade the door,” says Mark, and we set to work piling things against it. There were quite a few heavy things there, which was our first piece of luck that night, and the way we pulled and hauled and jerked them in front of that door would have done your heart good. In three minutes it would have taken an elephant to push it open.