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 reverberating depths. They felt of the rope which was taut and firm.

"He's all right," said Dayton. "There's not enough of him to get hurt," and he squeezed his portly person out between the flapping boards.

"All the same, I shall be glad to see him again," Jones declared, with an anxious frown upon his usually nonchalant countenance; and the two men started briskly down the hill in pursuit of "the team."

Meanwhile, Mr. Fetherbee was making his way slowly and cautiously down the rope. It was a good stout one and he had no real misgivings. Yet the situation was unusual enough to have a piquant flavor. In the first place the darkness was more than inky in character, the kind of blackness in comparison with which the blackest night seems luminous. Then there was the peculiar quality of the air, so different from anything above ground, that the words chill, and dampness, had no special relation to it. In the strange, tomb-like silence, his own breath, his own movements, waked a ghostly, whispering echo which was extremely weird and suggestive. Mr. Fetherbee was enchanted. He felt that he was getting down into the mysterious heart of things; that he was