ou all right?"

Will did not answer, but sat there chained, as it were, to his place.

Josh let fall the rope and stood upright, giving vent to a loud
expiration of the breath, and then wiping the perspiration from his
face.

He was thinking, and when Josh thought he closed his eyes tightly, as if
he could think better in the dark. He was not quick of imagination, but
when he had caught at an idea he was ready to act upon it.

The idea came pretty quickly now, and opening his eyes he looked sharply
round, picked up a great stone, and drove the iron bar a little more
tightly into the crevice of the rock.

Then he threw down the stone, stooped and tried the bar to find it
perfectly fast, and once more stopped to think.

An idea came again, and he pulled off his black silk neckerchief, a very
old weather-beaten affair, but tolerably strong, and kneeling down he
bound it firmly round the bar above the rope, passing it through the
loop at last, and knotting it securely below, so that the rope should
not be likely to slip off the smooth iron.

This done, Josh stood upright once more, gazing down into the black
shaft.

"Phew!" he said, with a fresh expiration of the breath; "it's a gashly
unked place, and the more you look the unkeder it gets, so here goes."

He went down on his hands and knees, took hold of the iron bar with one
hand, then with the other, and shuffled his legs over the shaft, an act
of daring ten times greater than that of Will, for he had no friend to
leave who had strength of arm to drag him up.

He held on by both hands for a few moments, then by one, as he took fast
hold of the rope with, his short deformed hand, and twisted one leg in
the rope, pressing his foot against it to have an additional hold; and
then, without the slightest hesitation he loosed his grasp of the iron
bar, placed the free hand above the other, and began to slide slowly
down.

If Josh Helston felt nervous he did not show it, but slid gently down,
his hands being too horny from constant handling of ropes to be injured
by the friction; neither did the task on hand seem difficult, as he went
down and down, swaying more and more as the length of rope between him
and the iron bar increased, and gradually beginning to turn as the hard
rope showed a disposition to unwind.

"He said she were strong enough to bear anything," he muttered; "and I
hope she be, for p'r'aps she'll have to carry two."

How this was to happen did n