e studied as easily as the exterior, and
a surgeon would be able to dissect a living being as easily as if the
subject were a corpse. But Clewe did not now wish to make public the
extraordinary adaptations of his discovery to the uses of the medical
man and the surgeon. He was intent upon discovering, as far as was
possible, the internal structure of the earth on which he dwelt, and
he did not wish to interfere at present with this great and absorbing
object by distracting his mind with any other application of his
Artesian ray.

It is not intended to describe in detail the various stages of the
progress of the Artesian ray into the subterranean regions. Sometimes
it revealed strata colored red, yellow, or green by the presence of
iron ore; sometimes it showed for a short distance a glittering disk,
produced by the action of the light upon a deep-sunken reservoir of
water; then it passed on, hour by hour, down, down into the eternal
rocks.

When the Artesian ray had begun to work its way through the rocks,
Margaret became less interested in observing its progress. Nothing new
presented itself; it was one continual stony disk which she saw when
she looked down into the shaft of light beneath her. Observation was
becoming more and more difficult even to Roland Clewe, and at last he
was obliged to set up a large telescope on a stand, and mount a ladder
in order to use it.

Day after day the Artesian ray went downward, always revealing rock,
rock, rock. The appliances for increased electric energy were working
well, and Clewe was entirely satisfied with the operation of his photic
borer.

One morning he came hurriedly to Margaret at her house, and announced
with glistening eyes that his ray had now gone to a greater degree into
the earth than man had ever yet reached.

"What have you found?" she asked, excitedly. "Rock, rock, rock," he
answered. "This little State of ours rests upon a firm foundation."

Although Roland Clewe found his observations rather monotonous work, he
was regular and constant at his post, and gave little opportunity to his
steadily progressing cylinder of light to reach and pass unseen anything
which might be of interest.

It was nearly a week after he had announced to Margaret that he had seen
deeper into the earth than any man before him that he mounted his ladder
to take his final observation for the night. When he looked through his
telescope his eye was dazzled by a light which obliged h