Laughingly Barbara climbed up to the highest point of the sloping cellar door. Suddenly there was a crash, followed by a frightened cry. Babs had disappeared.
The frightened girls lifted the other half of the sloping door and saw Babs lying in the underground entrance to the cellar. They hurried down damp, slippery steps and lifted her. Almost at once she opened her eyes, “I’m all right,” she said. “I guess this house is rather old and crumbly.” She rose, and, as no bones were broken, Betsy suggested that they take a look about the cellar which lay beyond them, dark, damp and undoubtedly rat infested.
“I’d rather not.” Sally hugged her white furs closely about her and shivered more from fear than cold.
“Well, then, you all stand here in the entrance,” the would-be detective suggested. “I see a faint ray of light coming from somewhere off there in the darkness and I’m going to see what it is.”
“I don’t know as we ought to let her go.” Virginia turned to Margaret. “I’ve read of old cisterns being in cellars.”
Betsy heard and turned back to reply, “My eyes are used to the darkness now. Honest Virg, I can see where I step.”
Cautiously feeling her way, she slowly advanced toward what seemed to be daylight coming through a crack under a door.
“I’ve reached it,” Betsy sang out. They could hear her voice plainly, though they could not see her. “It is a door. Wait until I open it.” As she spoke she pushed against it and the door opened silently as though it had been unlatched. Beyond was the typical stairway leading from a farm house kitchen to the cellar. A small high window in the wall was letting in a dim light.
“If one of us wasn’t such a fraid cat,” Betsy informed them, “I’d like to climb this stairway and see where it leads.”
“If you mean me, Betsy Clossen,” Sally, for once, flared up, “go ahead. If Virginia isn’t afraid to go, neither am I.”