, down through the car, and
into the great shell which lay below.

When Mr. Bryce and several workmen came running back with William
Cunningham, they were as much surprised as he had been, and could form
no theory to account for the disappearance of the car. It could not
have slipped down accidentally and descended by its own weight, for
the trap-door was open and the grating was in place. They sent in
great haste for Mr. Clewe, and when he arrived he wasted no time in
conjectures, but instantly ordered that the engine which was attached to
the car should be started and its chain wound up.

So great was the anxiety to get the car to the surface of the earth
that the engine which raised it was run at as high a speed as was deemed
safe, and in a little more than an hour the car came out of the mouth of
the shaft, and in it sat Ivan Rovinski, motionless and dead.

No one who knew Rovinski wondered that he had had the courage to make
the descent of the shaft, and those who were acquainted with his great
mechanical ability were not surprised that he had been able to manage,
by himself, the complicated machinery which would ordinarily require the
service of several men; but every one who saw him in the car, or after
he had been taken out of it, was amazed that he should be dead. There
was no sign of accident, no perceptible wound, no appearance, in fact,
of any cause why he should be a tranquil corpse and not an alert and
agile devil. Even when a post-mortem examination was made, the doctors
were puzzled. A threadlike solution of continuity was discovered in
certain parts of his body, but it was lost in others, and the coroner's
verdict was that he came to his death from unknown causes while
descending a shaft. The general opinion was that in some way or other he
had been frightened to death.

This accident, much to Roland Clewe's chagrin, discovered to the public
the existence of the great shaft. Whether or not he would announce
its existence himself, or whether he would close it up, had not been
determined by Clewe; but when he and Margaret had talked over the
matter soon after the terrible incident, his mind was made up beyond
all possibility of change, and, by means of great bombs, the shaft was
shattered and choked up for a depth of half a mile from its mouth. When
this work was accomplished, nothing remained but a shallow well, and,
when this had been filled up with solid masonry, the place where the
shaft had been