panted,
working away furiously.

In ten minutes I had sawn half through the wooden edge, then, handing my
tool to Clinton, I told him to continue the work while I rested. After a
few minutes I took the knife again, and at last, after nearly half an
hour had gone by, succeeded in making a small hole in the lid.
Inserting my two fingers, I felt some rough, uneven masses. I was now
fearfully excited. Tearing at the opening like a madman, I enlarged it
and extracted what looked like a large piece of coal. I knew in an
instant what it was. It was magnetic iron-ore. Holding it down to my
knife, the blade flew to it.

"Here is the mystery of the soul," I cried; "now we can use it to open
the door."

I had known a great conjurer once, who had deceived and puzzled his
audience with a box trick on similar lines: the man opening the box from
the inside by drawing down the lock with a magnet. Would this do the
same? I felt that our lives hung on the next moment. Taking the mass, I
pressed it against the door just opposite the hasp, and slid it up
against the wood. My heart leapt as I heard the hasp fly up outside, and
with a push the door opened.

"We are saved," I shouted. "We are saved by a miracle!"

"Bell, you are a genius," gasped poor Clinton; "but now, how about the
stone at the end of the passage?"

"We will soon see about that," I cried, taking the lantern. "Half the
danger is over, at any rate; and the worst half, too."

We rushed along the passage and up the stair until we reached the top.

"Why, Clinton," I cried, holding up the lantern, "the place was not shut
at all."

Nor was it. In his terror he had imagined it.

"I could not see in the dark, and I was nearly dead with fright," he
said. "Oh, Bell, let us get out of this as quickly as we can!"

We crushed through the aperture and once more stood in the chapel. I
then pushed the stone back into its place.

Dawn was just breaking when we escaped from the chapel. We hastened
across to the house. In the hall the clock pointed to five.

"Well, we have had an awful time," I said, as we stood in the hall
together; "but at least, Clinton, the end was worth the ghastly terror.
I have knocked the bottom out of your family legend for ever."

"I don't even now quite understand," he said.

"Don't you?--but it is so easy. That coffin never contained a body at
all, but was filled, as you perceive, with fragments of magnetic
iron-ore. For what diabolical purposes