Their adventures began chiefly because it was one of the wettest and coldest summers there had been for years. That drove them to do indoor things： you might say， indoor exploration. It is wonderful how much exploring you can do with a stump of candle in a big house， or in a row of houses. Polly had discovered long ago that if you opened a certain little door in the box.room attic of her house you would find the cistern and a dark place behind it which you could get into by a little careful climbing. The dark place was like a long tunnel with brick wall on one side and sloping roof on the other. In the roof there were little chunks of light between the slates. There was no floor in this tunnel： you had to step from rafter to rafter， and between them there was only plaster. If you stepped on this you would find yourself falling through the ceiling of the room below. Polly had used the bit of the tunnel just beside the cistern as a smugglers’ cave. She had brought up bits of old packing cases and the seats of broken kitchen chairs， and things of that sort， and spread them across from rafter to rafter so as to make a bit of floor. Here she kept a cash.box containing various treasures， and a story she was writing and usually a few apples. She had often drunk a quiet bottle of ginger. beer in there： the old bottles made it look more like a smugglers‘ cave.
