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.
"I must be going crazy," she cried in despair. "I couldn't have dreamed
those tools fell down, and yet where could they have gone? There's no
hole in the floor--"
Now Betty's nerves were sorely tried by the lonely imprisonment, the bad
air, the heat, and the darkness, and it is not to be wondered at that her
usual sound common sense was tricked by her imagination. Her fancy
suggested that the weight of the tools might have torn a hole in the
floor, they might have dropped through to the roof, and Betty herself
might be in momentary danger of stepping into this hole.
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