They could not run, or even walk very fast, because at every step they sank into the soft ground. But, after they had climbed the fence, they came to a little graveled walk that was drier.

"Bet you I can throw a stone farther than any of you," said Carleton Marsh.

"Bet you can't!" retorted Perry Phelps.

Then every one had to toss a stone into the brook. The water went so fast it was hard to tell whose stone went farthest, for none landed across the brook. Still, in a way this was satisfactory, for each boy was sure that his stone had won.

"Well, come on, if you're going to explore," said Nelson Baker. "What are you staring at, Sunny Boy?"

"Ice," said Sunny Boy, pointing up the stream. "Isn't that ice all over everything?"

The boys looked. A little distance away the ground seemed to be covered with cakes of ice.

"Hurry up!" shouted Perry. "It's an ice field. We can have heaps of fun playing."

The others hurried after Perry, and when they came to the field where the ice was they found that the brook was almost a river at this point.

It had cut a wide, new gash in the bank and had overflowed, leaving mud and water and ice in great quant.i.ties and cutting the trunks of little trees that stood in the way. The boys scrambled up on the ice and pretended that they were at the North Pole.

"I'll be the savage Eskimo and chase you white men," said Carleton.

"Are Eskimos savage?" asked Sunny Boy doubtfully. "They don't look savage in the geography book. They look fat."

"Of course they are savage," said Carleton. "Anybody who lives at the North Pole is savage. Now when I chase you, you have to jump."

Carleton made an awful face, such as he thought a savage Eskimo would make, and ran directly toward Sunny Boy, who jumped from his cake of ice to the ground. But instead of landing on the ground, he landed in water! Ice-cold water and up to his knees! And at that moment the ice on which Carleton stood began to rock.

"The brook!" gasped Sunny Boy. "It's running over again! It's inside my rubber boots!"

The boys jumped from the ice cakes on which they stood, and those who had only rubbers on were wet at once to the knees.

"We'll be drowned!" cried Perry Phelps.

Sunny Boy saw a barn in the next field, and he thought if they could only reach that they would be safe.

"We'll all take hold of hands," he said quickly. "And don't anybody let go. There's a barn up there, and we can go and stay in that. Bob will come and find us, I know he will."

The water kept rising higher and higher, and it was hard work to walk against the current. Once Sunny Boy stumbled and fell, and once Carleton lost his balance; but the others pulled them up again. When they reached the barn they found it was an old building, built very close to the brook and quite empty.

"It must have been the hay barn," said Sunny Boy, who remembered what he had learned when he visited Grandpa Horton's farm. "Sometimes hay barns are built out in the fields so it won't be so far to haul the hay. I wonder how far off the house is?"

The house had burned down years ago, but Sunny Boy did not know that.

The boys were only too thankful to have a dry floor to stand on, and they huddled in one corner out of the keen March wind that blew in through the windows, for every pane of gla.s.s in the barn was broken.

Every few minutes they could hear the crash of a chunk of ice against the building, and once or twice Sunny Boy thought he felt something move. The third time he saw Jimmie b.u.t.terworth looking at him.

"The barn _is_ moving!" said Sunny Boy loud.

And it was. The force of the water and the ice, driving against the poor worn out foundations, had loosened them, and the old barn was actually sailing. The boys ran to the door. All around them was water, water and ice. The barn began to rock and to lean to one side a little.

"It will tip over!" cried Carleton. "We'll be drowned."

"If we shout, some one will hear us and come and get us," suggested Sunny Boy. "We'll have to yell!"

And yell they did, shouting with all the strength and power of their lungs. They had almost given up hope of making any one hear when suddenly there came an answering shout and down in one corner of the field they saw something moving.

"It's Bob and the horse and wagon!" cried Sunny Boy. "Now we'll be all right."

"Well, you do manage to get yourselves into a pickle every time, don't you?" was Bob's greeting when he drove up. "Father sent me down to finish the fence alone and bring you up, and I couldn't imagine where you could be. Hurry up, kids, because I don't like the looks of this water. It will be coming in the wagon if it gets much higher."

Bob helped them all in and then drove slowly to the Parkney house. The horse had hard work to keep his footing in the water and ice, and he kept shaking his head as though he did not like it. But they reached the house safely, and Mrs. Parkney gave the boys milk to drink and clean dry stockings to wear as though she were used to any emergency, as indeed she was.

"I guess you've had enough exploring for one day," said Bob, as he drove the boys out to the head of the lane to get the half-past four o'clock trolley car. "If it's dull out here this summer, I mean to send for you, Sunny Boy, because excitement seems to follow you around."

The same merry conductor was on the four-thirty trolley car, and he was much interested to hear about the day's experiences. So were the mothers and fathers when the boys reached home.

The next morning Daddy Horton telephoned Mr. Parkney to ask him if the brook had done any damage over night. Mr. Parkney said that the old barn had been carried down past their farm and was completely wrecked.

"I'm glad we didn't stay in it," said Sunny Boy cheerfully. "It must have been a freshet, Daddy. Don't you think it was?"

It was a freshet, of course, and Daddy Horton said so.

After that Sat.u.r.day the weather grew warmer and warmer, and Sunny Boy began to think of summer. What he did when school closed and what happened to him, we'll have to tell you in another book, to be called "SUNNY BOY AND HIS GAMES."

THE END