Page:Betty Gordon at Boarding School.djvu/176

166 Betty had no wish to put her fingers on a mouse.

"How can I get out?" she cried aloud, a little wildly. "I can't breathe!"

In the uncanny silence that followed the sound of her voice, the sawing noise sounded regularly, rhythmically. In desperation Betty seized an iron crowbar she had backed into on the wall, and hurled it in the direction of the industrious rodents.

"Now I've done it," she admitted, as with a clatter and a bang that, she was sure, could be heard a mile away, an evident avalanche of tools tumbled to the floor. Her crowbar had struck a box of tools.

But the silence shut down again after that. Betty did not realize that the water tower was so isolated that even unusual noises inside it would not carry far, and with the door and the window both closed the room was practically sealed.

The sawing noise was not repeated, there was that much to be grateful for, Betty reflected. She wondered if she could batter down the door.

"I'll try, anyway," she thought wearily.

And then she could not find the crowbar! Around and around she went, feeling on the floor for the tools that had clattered down with such a racket and for the iron bar she had hurled among them. Not one tool could she put her hands on.