“There had been a smaller slide in June, which had terrified the family, and Willey had built a sort of slide-proof shelter down the road, in case another came. It wasn’t so far away that the family didn’t have time to get to it, if they started when they heard the slide first coming, and nobody has ever been able to explain why none of them got there. James Willey, a brother of the dead man, however, always said that his brother’s spirit came to him in a dream, and told him that the terrible rain, which had caused a rise of twenty-four feet in the Saco, made them fearful of being drowned, and when the water reached their door-sill, they fled not to the shelter hut, but higher up the slope. Then, when the slide came, they were too far away from the hut to escape. They had evidently been reading the Bible just before they fled, for it was found open in the house.” “In the house?” cried Peanut. “Didn’t the house get swept away?” “No, that’s the oddest and saddest part of the story. The slide split on a great boulder or ledge behind the house, and if they’d stayed in it, not a soul would have perished. As it was, Mr. and Mrs. Willey, five children, and two hired men were all killed. Three bodies were never found. Only the dog escaped. He appeared at a house far down the road, the next day, moaning and howling. He was seen running back and forth for a few hours, and then he disappeared and was never seen again. It was two or three days before the floods went down enough to allow rescue parties to get up the Notch, however.” “Let’s go see the rock that split the slide,” said Lou. Mr. Rogers led the way behind the site of the old house, and showed them the top of the rock, above the ground. “This boulder was thirty feet high in 1826,” he said. “The landslide, as you see, nearly buried it; but it split the stream, and the debris all rushed in two currents on either side of the house, uniting again in the meadow in front. The house stood for many years after that. I think it was destroyed finally by fire.” “But what gets me is, why should anybody want to live in such a lonesome spot, anyhow?” said Peanut. “Gee, it’s getting dark down here already.” “Well, there was no railroad in those days,” Mr. Rogers answered, “and the road through the Notch was the main artery of travel to the northern side of the mountains. I suppose the Willey House made a good stopping place for the night. Let’s go up to the railroad now, and get a look at the engineering job, which was a big thing in its day--and is still, for that matter.”