My Terminal Moraine | Page 5

fingers. I did not understand it,
and I did not try to, but walked up the trench and around into the dell,
thinking of Agnes.
I was very fond of milk, which, indeed, was almost the only food I now
cared for, and I was consequently much disappointed at my noonday
meal when I found that the milk had soured and was not fit to drink.
"You see, sir," said Susan, "ice is very scarce and dear, and we can not
afford to buy much of it. There was no f reezin' weather last winter, and
the price has gone up as high as the thermometer, sir, and so, between
the two of 'em, I can't keep things from spoilin'."
The idea now came to me that if Susan would take the milk, and
anything else she wished to keep cool in this hot weather, to the bottom
of the gravel-pit, she would find the temperature there cold enough to
preserve them without ice, and I told her so.
The next morning Susan came to me with a pleased countenance and
said, "I put the butter and the milk in that pit last night, and the butter's
just as hard and the milk's as sweet as if it had been kept in an
ice-house. But the place is as cold as an ice-house, sir, and unless I am
mistaken, there's ice in it. Anyway, what do you call that?" And she
took from a little basket a piece of grayish ice as large as my fist.
"When I found it was so cold down there, sir," she said, "I thought I
would dig a little myself and see what made it so; and I took a
fire-shovel and hatchet, and, when I had scraped away some of the
gravel, I came to something hard and chopped off this piece of it, which

is real ice, sir, or I know nothing about it. Perhaps there used to be an
ice-house there, and you might get some of it if you dug, though why
anybody should put it down so deep and then cover it up, I'm sure I
don't know. But as long as there's any there, I think we should get it out,
even if there's only a little of it; for I can not take everything down to
that pit, and we might as well have it in the refrigerator."
This seemed to me like very good sense, and if I had had a man I
should have ordered him to go down to the pit and dig up any lumps of
ice he might find and bring them to the house. But I had no man, and I
therefore became impressed with the opinion that if I did not want to
drink sour milk for the rest of the summer, it might be a good thing for
me to go down there and dig out some of the ice myself. So with
pickaxe and shovel I went to the bottom of the pit and set myself to
work.
A few inches below the surface I found that my shovel struck
something hard, and, clearing away the gravel from this for two or
three square feet, I looked down upon a solid mass of ice. It was dirty
and begrimed, but it was truly ice. With my pick I detached some large
pieces of it. These, with some discomfort, I carried out into the dell
where Susan might come with her basket and get them.
For several days Susan and I took out ice from the pit, and then I
thought that perhaps Tom Burton might feel some interest in this frozen
deposit in my terminal moraine, and so I wrote to him about it. He did
not answer my letter, but instead arrived himself the next afternoon.
"Ice at the bottom of a gravel-pit," said he, "is a thing I never heard of.
Will you lend me a spade and a pickaxe?"
When Tom came out of that pit--it was too cold a place for me to go
with him and watch his proceedings--I saw him come running toward
the house.
"Walter," he shouted, "we must hire all the men we can find and dig,
dig, dig. If I am not mistaken something has happened on your place
that is wonderful almost beyond belief. But we must not stop to talk.

We must dig, dig, dig; dig all day and dig all night. Don't think of the
cost. I'll attend to that. I'll get the money. What we must do is to find
men and set them to work."
"What's the matter?" said I. "What has happened?"
"I haven't time to talk about it now; besides I don't want to, for fear that
I should find that I am mistaken.