“I—I’m ’fraid maybe we’ll be struck by lightning,” whimpered Margy.
“Oh, nonsense!” replied her mother.
“No lightning ever comes in here,” said Farmer Joel. “Why, if lightning came in there couldn’t be any ice. The lightning would melt the ice, and it hasn’t done that. I’ll show you a big pile of it back in the cave. Of course no lightning ever comes in here! Don’t be afraid.”
The thunder was not so loud now, and as no lightning could be seen because the Bunkers were far back in the dark cave, the two smallest children stopped their crying.
“Is there really ice in here?” asked Russ.
“It feels so,” said Rose, with a little shiver.
“Yes, there’s ice here,” went on the farmer. “It comes every year, and stays until after the Fourth of July. Come, I’ll show you.”
Lighting a match and setting ablaze a stick he picked up from the dry floor of the cave in the rocks, Farmer Joel led the way toward the back of the dark hole. The blazing stick gave light like a torch.
It grew colder and colder the deeper they went into the cave, and Mrs. Bunker, with a little shiver, exclaimed:
“It is cold in here!”