The toll-woman laughed cheerfully as she poured out more tea for herself, Grandma Padgett having waved back the teapot spout.
“I took the only chance I saw and jumped for that there cave.”
Both Robert and his aunt arose from their chairs to look out of the back door.
The cave was a structure which I believe is peculiar to the West, being in reality a kind of dug-out. It flourished before people built substantial houses with cellars under them, and held the same relation to the family's summer economy as the potato, apple, and turnip holes did to its winter comfort. Milk, butter, perishable fruit, lard, meats, and even preserves were kept in the cave. It was intended for summer coolness and winter warmth. To make a cave, you lifted the sod and dug out a foot of earth. The bottom was covered with straw. Over this you made boards meet and brace each other with the slope of the roof. The ends were boarded up, leaving room for a door, and the whole outside sodded thickly, so that a cave looked like a sharp-printed bulge in the sward, excepting at that end where the heavy padlocked door closed it. It was a temptation to bad boys and active girls; they always wanted to run over it and hear the hollow sound of the boards under their feet. I once saw a cave break through and swallow one out of such a galloping troup, to his great dismay, for he was running over an imaginary volcano, and when he sat down to his shoulders in an apple-butter jar, the hot lava seemed ready made to his hand.
From the toll-woman's cave-roof, spikes of yellow mustard were shooting up into the air. The door looked as stout as the opening to a bank vault, though this comparison did not occur to the children, and was secure with staple and padlock and three huge hinges. Evidently, no mischievous feet had cantered over the ridge of this cave.
It stood a few yards from the back door.
“I had the key in my pocket,” said the toll-woman, “and ever since then I've never carried it anywhere else. I clapped, it into the padlock and turned, but just as I pulled the door I heard feet comin' around the house full drive. Instead of jumpin' into the cave I jumped behind it. I thought they had me, but I wasn't goin' to be crunched to death in a hole, like a mouse. My stocking-feet slipped, and I came down flat, but right where the shadow of the house and the shadow of the cave fell all over me. If I hadn't slipped I'd been runnin' across that field, and they'd seen me sure. Folks around here made a good deal of fuss over the way things turned out, but I don't, take any more credit than's my due, so I say it just happened that I didn't try to run further.
“The two men outside unlocked the back door and the one inside came on to the step.
“'There's nothin' in the box and nobody in here,' says he. 'She's jumped out o' bed and run and carried the cash with her.'
“'Did you look under the bed?' says one of the outsiders. And he ran and looked himself; anyway, he went in the house and came out again. I was glad I hadn't got under the bed.