Of course, this little episode gave us a scare, but it was only temporary.  We swore everyone to secrecy, so that Mr. Clark, the principal, wouldn’t hear of the mishap and suppress any further cave building.  It was obvious that the only roof we could depend on for our cave would be a wooden roof.  If we had been at Willow Clump Island we would have gotten any amount of slabs from the lumber mills across the river.

One of our schoolmates, a day scholar, came to the rescue.  His name was Chester Hill, a little bit of a chap, about the shortest for his age that I have ever seen.  His name was so at variance to his size that we called him “Hillock,” for short.  Now Hillock lived on a farm about eight miles from school, and used to drive in every day on a farm wagon.  He had helped us dig the cave under the cedar tree, and when he learned that we would need some lumber to build a safe cave, he told us that he had an uncle who owned a lumber mill on the Morris River, from whom he was sure we could get all the slabs we wanted.  Of course, we were delighted, and laid our plans for an elaborate cave house.  Hillock promised to be on hand on the following Saturday afternoon with his load of lumber.

Excavating for the Cave.

We immediately set out to make the necessary excavation.  The side of a bushy knoll was chosen as a suitable site.  First we carefully transplanted the bushes that grew in the square we had marked out for the cave, and cutting the sod into squares, piled it all neatly to one side.  Then we shoveled away the top-soil and heaped it up for future use.  After that we dug away the sandy subsoil.  The cave proper we planned to make about 8 feet by 10 feet, with a passageway 2 feet wide and 6 feet long, leading in from a large bush at the base of the knoll.  Our excavation was therefore somewhat T-shaped (see Fig. 182).  At the deepest part we had to dig down about 10 feet.

[Illustration:  Fig. 182.  Excavation for the Cave.]

The digging was all done by Saturday, when Hillock pulled up with a big load of slabs.  Slabs are a very unsatisfactory kind of wood for most purposes.  Being the outside cut, they are usually very irregular and weak in spots.  In many places they are almost clear bark.  Of course, had our pocketbooks permitted, we would have used stout scantlings for the corner posts of our cave house and substantial boards for the walls, roof and flooring, but we had to be content with materials at hand.  Eight of the best slabs were selected for our corner posts; four of them we cut to the length of 8 feet and the others to a length of 6 feet.  The long slabs were set up at the rear of the cave, two at each corner, one flat against the rear wall, with its edge buried in the corner, and the other against the side wall, with its edge tight against the rear slab, as in Fig. 183.  The same was done at the forward corners with the shorter slabs.  A couple of slabs were now set up on each side of the passageway, and a corresponding pair against the rear wall.  The upper and lower ends of the uprights were then connected with slabs, called stringpieces.