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 detac