will_, who
knows?" And with a smile full of sarcastic meaning, he pushed Mr.
Harper's arm aside and made for the staircase, up which he presently
vanished without another attempt on the lawyer's part to hold him back.

A few minutes later the lawyer was getting what information he could
about the so-called Devil's Cauldron.

It seems that this was a very deep hole in which, on account of the rocky
formation surrounding it, the water swept in an eddy which had the force
of a whirlpool. No one had ever sounded its depths and nothing had ever
been seen again which had once been sucked into its deathly hollow. That
Georgian's body had found its everlasting grave there, many had believed
from the first, and if the conviction had not yet been publicly expressed
it was out of consideration for Mr. Ransom, to whose hopes it could but
ring a final knell.

"Where is the hole? How far from the waterfall?" queried Mr. Harper.

"A good mile," muttered one man. "Quite around the bend of the stream.
It's a horrid place, sir. We've always been mortal careful about rowing
down that side of the river. Children are never allowed to. Only a man's
strength could get him free again if he once struck the eddy."

"Would anything floating down from the falls be apt to strike this eddy?"

"Very apt. It would be a miracle if it didn't. That is why we all turned
out so willingly the first day. We knew that if Mrs. Ransom's body was to
be found at all, it would be found then; another day it would be beyond
our reach."

"You say that no one has ever sounded the depths of that hole. Has any
one ever tried to?"

"More than once. Scientific men and others."

"Did they ever emerge--any of them?"

"Yes, one, a powerful sort of chap with Indian blood in him. But he
didn't advise any one to try it; said the knowledge wasn't worth the
strain to heart and muscle."

"What was the knowledge? We can imagine the strain."

"Oh, he said as how the walls of the vortex--didn't he call it a
vortex--was all stone, and he spoke of a ledge--I didn't hear what
else."

"To go down there a man would have to take his life in his hand, I see.
Well, I don't think I will try," dryly observed the lawyer as he left the
room.

He could no longer hide his excitement at the thought that Hazen
meditated this undertaking.

"How he must want money!" thought he. That a man should face such a
horror for another man's profit did not seem likely enough to engage his
c