Page:Under Two Skies.djvu/41

 Jenny could see down into the shaft, he had not yet mentioned that an accident had suspended the working.

The sides of the shafts were lined with horizontal slabs of wood; and the mischief was that one of the slabs near the top had become loose, and had at last fallen the full depth of a hundred feet, and so smashed and jammed the bucket, which was just clear of the water at the bottom, as to make it immovable. One slab having loosened itself, others were likely to do the same; the shafts were no longer secure, and the danger of descending to the injured bucket (without testing every slab on the way, as the blacksmith proposed) was great.

There was only one shaft for Miss Jenny to look down, for the uninjured bucket hung at the mouth of the other. She did not much like looking down the smooth-sided, damp, narrow shaft; it put her in mind of the bottomless pit; yet to gaze down, down, down, rather fascinated her.

'You have not yet shown me how it works,' she said presently, glancing across the raised lips of the shaft at the whim-driver, who was