hot
as you would in another."

"Oh no," said he. "There is nothing regular or exact in nature; even our
earth is not a perfect sphere. Nature is never mathematically correct.
You must always allow for variations. In some parts of the earth its
heated core, or whatever it is, must be very, very far down."

At this moment a happy thought struck Margaret.

"How easy it would be, Roland, for you to examine this great hole! I can
do it; anybody can do it. It's perfectly amazing when you think of
it. All you have to do is to take your Artesian, ray machine into
that building and set it over the hole; then you can light the whole
interior, all the way down to the bottom, and with a telescope you can
see everything that is in it."

"Yes," said he; "but I think I can do it better than that. It would be
very difficult to transfer the photic borer to the other building, and I
can light up the interior perfectly well by means of electric lights. I
can even lower a camera down to the very bottom and take photographs of
the interior."

"Why, that would be perfectly glorious!" cried Margaret, springing to
her feet, an immense relief coming to her mind with the thought that to
examine this actual shaft it would not be necessary for anybody to go
down into it.

"I should go to work at that immediately," said he, "but I must have a
different sort of windlass--one that shall be moved by an engine. I
will rig up the big telescope too, so that we can look down when we have
lighted up the bottom."

It required days to do all that Roland Clewe had planned. A great
deal of the necessary work was done in his own establishment, and
much machinery besides was sent from New York. When all was ready
many experiments were made with the electric lights and camera, and
photographs of inexpressible value and interest were taken at various
points on the sides of this wonderful perpendicular tunnel.

At last Clewe was prepared to photograph the lower portion of the shaft.
With a peculiar camera and a powerful light five photographs were taken
of the very bottom of the great shaft, four in horizontal directions and
one immediately below the camera. When these photographs were printed
by the improved methods then in vogue, Clewe seized the pictures and
examined them with eager haste. For some moments he stood silent, his
eyes fixed upon the photographs as if there was nothing else in this
world; but all he saw on each was an irregular patch of l