“Then it was struck by that terrible bolt, was it?” asked the scout master.
“Smashed, into flinders,” replied Josh. “You never in all your life saw such a wreck, sir.”
“We’ll all take a glance at it before we leave this place,” the leader of the hiking troop told them. “But from the way things look there’s a good chance we may think it best to put in the night right here, where we can be sure of a dry place for sleeping.”
“That strikes me as a good idea, sir,” said Tom, promptly, for he had been considering proposing that very plan himself, though of course he did not see fit to say so now.
“All I hope is that the river doesn’t sweep away a part of Lenox,” one of the boys was heard to say. “You remember that years ago, before any of us can remember, they had a bad flood, and some lives were lost.”
“Oh yes, but that was in the spring,” explained Josh, “when the heavy snows melted, and what with ten days of rain the ground couldn’t take up any more water. It’s a whole lot different in June. Besides, we’ve been having it pretty hot and dry lately, remember, and the earth can drink up a lot of water.”
“Still, you never can tell what a flood will do,” George was heard to say; but as they all understood his way of looking at the worst side of things none of the other boys took much stock in his gloomy predictions.
“We must hustle to find some dry wood, so as to cook our supper, and keep warm afterwards,” Felix told them.
“Leave us alone to do that,” Josh announced. “No matter how hard it has been raining you can always get plenty of dry stuff out of the heart of a stump or a log. And thank goodness we brought an ax along with us.”
“Say, did you feel anything then?” called out one of the other boys. “Seemed to me the rocks might be trembling as they did when it thundered extra loud. There it goes again! Get that, fellows?”