atically. "I suppose I shouldn't admit it,
but deep down, way back in the primitive part of my thick head, I was
sometimes guilty of wondering about this creature."

Rick held out his hand. "Shake hands with another superstitious
chucklehead. So was I. But let it be said to our credit that neither of
us was so scared we were afraid to move."

He chuckled. "Of course there were times when I just had to keep my poor
icy spine from freezing solid." He replaced the film on the sprockets
and closed the gate with great care.

"The projector is aimed at the wall," Scotty pointed out, "right at the
end of the tunnel. How does it get to where people can see it?"

"There has to be a way," Rick said. He swept the beam of his light
around and it steadied on an iron pipe. "Hey, look!"

The pipe entered through the end of the tunnel, threaded into a
right-angle pipe fitting, and disappeared into the tunnel floor!

"So that's how the water comes out of the hillside!" Rick exclaimed.
"The well was originally driven straight down, as a well should be, and
the horizontal pipe was added later. It misses the lower tunnel by about
six feet."

"That's not the only interesting thing about this end of the tunnel,"
Scotty added. "This whole end is artificial, including part of the roof
over the well. Take a look. It's mortarless stonework. No wonder the
face was so seamed on the outside. Whoever did this was a terrific
mason, because he selected rocks--probably from the mine itself--that
duplicated the contour of the hill. But why go to all the trouble?
That's what puzzles me."

"Maybe this is the reason," Rick said. He pointed to rusty iron
projecting from the wall. The iron supported a block of stone, by means
of an iron pin that ran from the bottom of the stone through a hole in
the iron piece projecting from the wall. At the top of the stone was a
similar arrangement. It was an elementary but effective hinge, long ago
rusted to disuse.

Rick studied the wall, and directly in front of the projector lens he
found another of the same arrangements, but with a difference. This one
was modern, and it had been painted to prevent rusting. There were
traces of graphite or graphite grease where the pins went through the
iron supports.

Clearly, the block of stone supported by the iron pins formed a
porthole, the pins allowing the stone to be swung inward. The old,
rusted one had been unused for decades, but the port in front of the
proje