performance he obtained from a benovolent bystander a drink of whiskey,
the first he had had since he was committed to the poorhouse.

But a voice soon came down the shaft calling to me. I recognized it as
that of Tom Burton, and replied that I was safe, and that I was coming
up the ladder. But in my attempt to climb, I found that I was unable
to do so. Chilled and stiffened by the cold and weakened by fatigue and
excitement, I believe I never should have been able to leave that
ice chamber if my faithful friend had not come down the ladder and
vigorously assisted me to reach the outer air.

Seated on the ground, my back against a great oak tree, I was quickly
surrounded by a crowd of my neighbors, the workmen and the people who
had been drawn to the spot by the news of the strange accident, to gaze
at me as if I were some unknown being excavated from the bowels of the
earth, I was sipping some brandy and water which Burton had handed me,
when Aaron Boyce pushed himself in front of me.

"Well, sir," he said, "I am mighty glad you got out of that scrape. I'm
bound to say I didn't expect you would. I have been sure all along that
it wasn't right to meddle with things that go agin Nature, and I haven't
any doubt that you'll see that for yourself and fill up all them tunnels
and shafts you've made. The ice that comes on ponds and rivers was good
enough for our forefathers, and it ought to be good enough for us. And
as for this cold stuff you find in your gravel-pit, I don't believe it's
ice at all; and if it is, like as not it's made of some sort of pizen
stuff that freezes easier than water. For everybody knows that water
don't freeze in a well, and if it don't do that, why should it do it in
any kind of a hole in the ground? So perhaps it's just as well that you
did git shut up there, sir, and find out for yourself what a dangerous
thing it is to fool with Nature and try to git ice from the bottom of
the ground instead of the top of the water."

This speech made me angry, for I knew that old Boyce was a man who was
always glad to get hold of anything which had gone wrong and try to make
it worse; but I was too weak to answer him.

This, however, would not have been necessary, for Tom Burton turned upon
him. "Idiot," said he, "if that is your way of thinking you might as
well say that if a well caves in you should never again dig for water,
or that nobody should have a cellar under his house for fear that the
house sh