et out before the explosion.

Our party drove there in five double-seated wagons as far as Moose-Yard
Brook, where we left the teams and walked the remaining two miles
through the woods to Overset Pond. Besides five of us from the old
Squire's, there were our two young neighbors, Thomas and Catherine
Edwards, Willis Murch and his older brother, Ben, the two Darnley boys,
Newman and Rufus, their sister, Adriana, and ten or twelve other young
people.

Besides luncheon baskets and materials to make lemonade, we had taken
along axes, two crowbars, two lanterns, four pounds of blasting powder
and three feet of safety fuse. My cousin Addison had also brought a
hammer, drill and "spoon." The girls were chiefly interested in the
picnic; but we boys were resolved to see what was in the depths of the
cave, and immediately on reaching the place several of us lighted the
lanterns and went in.

At no place could we stand upright. Apparently some animal had wintered
there, for the interior had a rank odor; but we crawled on over rocks
until we came to the obstructing stone sixty or seventy feet from the
entrance.

We had planned to drill a hole in the rock, blast it into pieces, and
thus clear a passage to what lay beyond it. On closer inspection,
however, we found that it was almost impossible to set the drill and
deal blows with the hammer. But the stone rested on another rock, and we
believed that we could push powder in beneath it and so get an upward
blast that would heave the stone either forward or backward, or perhaps
even break it in halves. We therefore set to work, thrusting the powder
far under the stone with a blunt stick, until we had a charge of about
four pounds. When we had connected the fuse we heaped sand about the
base of the stone, to confine the powder.

The blast was finally ready; and then the question who should fire it
arose. The three feet of fuse would, we believed, give two full minutes
for whoever lighted it to get out of the Den; but fuse sometimes burns
faster than is expected, and the safety fuse made in those days was not
so uniform in quality as that of present times. At first no one seemed
greatly to desire the honor of touching it off. The boys stood and joked
one another about it, while the girls looked on from a safe distance.

"I shan't feel offended if any one gets ahead of me," Addison remarked
carelessly.

"I'd just as soon have some one else do it," Ben said, smiling.

I had no id