There was no hope. What hope could there be for him, Lavirotte, buried thirty feet below a roaring thoroughfare of London, with no possible means of communication with the upper world, a feebleness so great that it did not allow him to do more than stand, and twelve clear feet in the perpendicular between him and deliverance? Under such circumstances how could anyone hope? What could anyone do? Nothing. Lie down and die. There was space enough to die, and air enough to make dying tedious. That was the worst of it. It was bad enough to die at any time; but to die when young, of no fault of one's own, and when dying happened to be tedious, was almost beyond endurance. And yet what could one do but endure? Nothing. No action was possible. He could not without violence accelerate his death. By no power at his disposal could he retard it. It was dismal to die here, alone, unknown. It was chilling to think that the whole great, bustling world abroad would go on while, from mere hunger, or, still worse, thirst, he was panting out the last faint breaths of life in this hideous darkness here. There was no help for it. Second by second, man lives through his life, is conscious of living; and when the proper time comes, hour by hour he is conscious that, owing to some failure in his internal economy, he is dying. But here was he, Lavirotte, in the full consciousness of the possession of youth and of health, save in so far as health had been exhausted by trying labours and wasting fasts, about to die because there was no pitcher of water from which he might slake his thirst, no crust which could allay the pangs of hunger. Suppose he had been upon the upper, gracious earth, without any of the money now in his pocket. Suppose he had nothing but his youth and youthful elasticity of spirits, even feeble as he now was, he might pick up a living somewhere. He had education and good manners. He might not be able to earn two hundred pounds a year, but he could make a shilling, eighteenpence a day somehow, and on eighteenpence a day a man could live. On eighteenpence a day no man could have splendours or luxuries, but he might have water free from the fountain he had just passed in front of that church in Fleet Street, and water was a great deal. Water was half life, more than half life-water was all life when one was thirsty, as he was now. Then, for eighteenpence a day he might have food, not luxurious or exquisite food; but in his wanderings through London he had seen places where suppers were set forth at threepence-large bowls of boiled eels swimming in appetising gravy, with, to each bowl, a huge junk of milky white bread. He had, when his pocket was comparatively full of money, often seen the wearied artisan or factory "hand" eating with relish eel-soup and bread. He had stood looking in at the windows, and, being full-fed himself, congratulated himself upon the comfort, the luxury, these poor people enjoyed in their savoury evening repast. He had watched them go in tired and dreary, worn out with the mean commonplaces of hard work and insufficient wages. He had watched them sit down in a listless, careless way, as though they cared not whether the next hour brought them death or not. Then, gradually, as the savour of the place penetrated them, and as the eager but delayed appetite became satisfied, he had seen a kind of attenuated conviviality arise between these poor folk, until, at the end, when they had finished their meal, they came forth congratulating themselves upon the cheapness, wholesomeness, and satisfying power of the food they had enjoyed. Now, supposing in a shop he had a basin of this eel-soup, not merely soup, but soup with luscious, succulent flesh of the rich fish swimming about in that delicious liquor, and in his hand a piece of bread larger than one fist, but not quite so large as two, what should he do? First of all he would take the spoon-nay, not the spoon, the bowl itself, and quench his thirst and recruit his failing energies with a long draught out of that humble, yellow bowl. He would drink nearly all the liquid up, for he was parched and dry. Abroad would be the sound of traffic and of human voices, stronger than the sound of traffic now beating against his ears. Then, when he had slaked his thirst he would eat some of the bread-no, the bread was too dry. It would make him thirsty again. He would eat some of the fish, and sop the soft white bread in what remained of the soothing liquor. And when he had finished, he, too, would come forth with a contented mind, and supposing any trace of thirst remained, and he had no money to spend in fantastic ways of allaying thirst, he would go to some public drinking-fountain where there was an unlimited supply of water, and out of the clean white metal cups drink and drink and drink until this horrible dryness of mouth and throat had been finally removed, and he felt cheered and invigorated, and fit to face any difficulty or odds that might be against him. Threepence, and he might enjoy what then seemed to him an unparalleled luxury! But supposing he were free and penniless, there was nothing to prevent him walking to the first drinking-fountain that offered and quenching his thirst, drowning his thirst in its free waters. He could have one, two, three, any number of cups of water, and, while drinking, he could touch his fellow-man, see the blue sky above him, and feel upon his cheek the wind made by passing men and vehicles. Now was he here, young and full of notions of life, with no malady of ordinary growth upon him, merely the victim of an extraordinary accident, destined to die in darkness of thirst, of hunger, of despair. There was no hope for him. Dora knew he spent most of his day in that tower. She did not know why. She would never think of seeking him there. And if she did seek him, if she came and knocked, she would get no reply. She would have no reason to assume more than that he did not hear, being there, or was absent from the place. If she called at his lodgings she would be told all they knew of him, and all they knew of him would not help her forward towards his present condition. He had no means of measuring time. His watch had ceased to beat, he could not tell how long ago. He held it up against his ear. It was silent. This silence seemed to him typical of the final silence which already surrounded Lionel Crawford, and which was now gathering around himself. Through this silence now came a sound, It was the sound of something falling. Something very small falling sharply, as it were, against the dull murmur of the traffic around him. He paused and listened. Then he sprang to his feet, aroused by a tremendous crash which deafened his ears, shook him as though a great gale blew, and filled his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils with some thick air or dust, he knew not which, that for a moment threatened to suffocate him. The loft above had fallen.

CHAPTER V

Before this tremendous noise and confusion had arisen, Lavirotte had no means of ascertaining how time went. He was conscious of certain pauses and beats in the great noise of traffic above his head. The pauses and beats, he assumed, of traffic in the artery of time. But he knew nothing certain. He had kept no record whatever. He was conscious that there had been periods of activity and quiescence, just as he was conscious there had been periods of activity and quiescence in his youth, when he was a child. But, as in the remote past, he had lost all knowledge or record of the numbers of the period. His reason told him he could not have been a fortnight entombed. His memory told him nothing. Abroad in the busy street and lanes close to St. Prisca's Tower, the fall of the lowest loft made a prodigious commotion. First of all, there was the roar of noise accompanying the fall of the floor, and of the tons upon tons of stones and clay lying on the loft. Then out through the narrow windows of the tower sprang shafts of dust, forced furiously outward by the enormous pressure upon the air within. For a moment the tumultuous traffic of Porter Street was stopped, and men who would scarcely have minded the downfall of the warehouse out of which they were loading their vans or carts, stood in silent amazement at the inexplicable, tremendous subsidence which had occurred in the tower. Those men who were familiar with the place were all the more amazed, because they believed there had been no possibility of the old tower uttering such a terrible note as that which had proceeded from it. They believed that the lofts of the tower were merely decayed wood. It was well known that the bells had been long ago removed, and as there had been in that tower, so far as the frequenters of Porter Street knew, nothing which could with profit be stolen, the interest in that tower to them had been less than in the Monument. To people of this class the Monument was something like the rainbow or the Milky Way. It had no effect on life, no influence upon wages, and, consequently, was altogether unworthy of consideration. Rain and hail and snow influenced wages in so far as they impeded work, but not the Monument, not St. Prisca's Tower, not the rainbow, not the Milky Way, controlled work, and therefore each, while it might be a matter for dreamy speculation under the influence of tobacco, was absolutely indifferent to the workmen frequenting Porter Street. Few, except workmen, or those intimately connected with workmen, frequented Porter Street. You might walk there a whole day long with the assurance you would never meet a brougham or a hansom, a beau or a lady. It was as much out of the line of the fashionable world as Kamtchatka. In Nova Zembla, in Patagonia, in Japan, in Florida, you may meet an English nobleman, an English lady, but in the history of Porter Street it is not recorded that any member of the elegant world wandered there for a hundred years. The first effect of the tremendous crash, caused by the falling of the loft, was to paralyse activity for a short time. The next thing was to create discussion as to the possible source and cause of the crash. The third was to induce speculation as to the fate of anyone who might have been in the tower at the time of the catastrophe. Then slowly, very slowly, those around the place began to realise the fact that someone-a man-more than one man-two men it was thought, of late-one man of old-two men of late-an old man some time ago-a young man latterly, had taken up their residence in that tower. This might account for something of the extraordinary in what had taken place. It might have been that owing to something or other done by these men, this enormous explosion-for so it seemed at first-had occurred. They may have had some object in blowing down the tower, or in some other violent onslaught against its integrity. If this were so, in all likelihood they were both now far beyond the range of any danger which could reach them from the tower. After a while, when speculation had become somewhat methodical and less vague, people began to remember that there was nothing particularly dangerous-looking about either of the men who had taken up their residence in the tower, and that in all probability neither of them had been actuated by any criminal designs. There for a while public opinion stood still, and men began to wonder what was the fate of their fellow-men, whose lives had for some time back been associated in their minds with the existence of the tower. Slowly, gradually, the people who were familiar with Porter Street came to think that possibly the two men, whose appearance had been connected in their minds with that place for some time, had been imperilled or destroyed in the fall of the lofts. For to the outside public it had seemed that nothing less than the fall of the lofts could have produced so great a noise as they had heard. They had not taken into account that the beams of dust which shot across the street and lanes had reached no higher than the first loft, and they had not taken care to conclude that since no dust exuded through the higher windows, the likelihood was that the higher lofts were untouched. But after the first sense of arrest and confusion which came upon those within the scope of the sound, there arose the humane idea of rendering succour to the living, if the place contained anyone alive, or tendering services to the dead, supposing both had perished. Then it was anxiously asked, was anything known as to whether either or both men were in the tower. It was well known that the old man now seldom came forth, that the young man brought in the provisions necessary for the two, and that even he was seldom for any long time absent from St. Prisca's. Moment by moment people began to recollect that the old man had not been seen out of the tower for many days, and that the young man had been seen to leave the tower and return. In such a crowded thoroughfare it was almost impossible that the door of the tower could be opened without exciting observation. It was also nearly impossible that any close observation could have been made. It is quite common for a busy man who lives close to a church clock that strikes the hours and the quarters, to hear and yet not heed the striking of the clock; so that you may ask him, after the striking, what has occurred with regard to the hour, and he may have been perfectly unconscious at the time the clock struck that he was observing the sound, and yet when asked he may be able to tell perfectly the time. So it was with these busy folk in Porter Street. They had never regarded those two men with any interest whatever beyond the interest one feels for a friendly but unknown dog, or for a man who is not likely ever in the course of life to have more than a passing interest for the observer. Nevertheless, these busy folk who worked hour by hour, day by day, and the sum of whose life was made up in the sum of their work, and the mere material comforts and pleasures which the result of their work brought them, had insensibly drunk in the fact that two men had entered that tower, that neither of these men had come forth, and that now the likelihood was the lives of either or both of these men had been swallowed up in the catastrophe which had occurred. With men of the class who worked in Porter Street, thought is a very rarely exercised faculty. They have to carry huge weights, heave winches, stow goods, pack and manage vast bales, in the conduct of which the eye for space and the muscle for motion is all that is called into play. Everything else is designed by the foreman, and each man has no more to do with every separate piece of goods than dispose of it as his strength will allow in the position the foreman indicates. Hence men of this class are exceedingly slow to invent, and exceedingly quick to act. When the loft fell, all the men within hearing of the crash immediately ceased to work, and stood stupidly looking on as though they expected some miraculous manifestation. They did not remain inactive because of any disinclination to help, if help were needed, but they had not realised the fact that it was possible their great strength might be of avail to anyone suffering. All at once a woman cried: "My God, the men are buried!" and before the words were well out of her mouth, the crowd seemed to grasp the central idea that underneath the encumbrance of these lofts had been buried two men, who were formed in every way like themselves, and who, although not of their class, were nevertheless entitled to all that could be done for them.

CHAPTER VI

How were the entombed men to be delivered? Various ways suggested themselves in the heat of the moment. It was plain to all that the first thing to be done was to force the door. This was no trivial matter. How it was to be forced was the consideration. There were those among the crowd who had seen the door open, and noticed the huge bolt of the lock which shot into an iron holdfast let into the solid stonework of the tower. They knew that the old man had never omitted to lock the door on the inside when he came in, and that the young man had been no less careful. There was a general belief that something secret, and, upon the whole, uncommendable, was going on in that tower, and the desire to rescue the two imprisoned men was largely augmented by curiosity. The laneway from which the door opened was seldom crowded. There was usually a brisk traffic up and down it; but in that part of the City the narrow laneways that feed the great thoroughfares are seldom blocked, although the main thoroughfares themselves may be impassable. A man in the crowd cried out: "Someone get a pole or a beam, and we'll soon have them out." Then several men rushed off in various directions. By this time the traffic in the laneways and in Porter Street itself was interrupted. The workmen ran out of the stores and wharfs, the waggoners and carters deserted their horses, and even the bargemen from the river had come up on hearing that some terrible accident had befallen St. Prisca's Tower. In a few minutes three men were seen advancing, carrying a heavy beam of wood. Other men ran to help them. A dozen willing arms had now seized the beam, and a hundred men were anxious to lend their aid if opportunity offered. A way was cleared for the men with the beam. The people separated on both sides. The men turned out of Porter Street and ran up into the lane. The men engaged in carrying the baulk were too intent upon getting it to its destination as quick as possible to observe one fatal defect. One onlooker shouted out: "Too long. Too long." Then the men carrying it swept up, way was made for them, and they tried to bring the beam into position for use as a battering-ram against the door. Then the onlooker's words were confirmed by experience, and it was seen that it would be utterly impossible to use the baulk effectually as a ram, for, owing to the narrowness of the lane, it was impossible to get it at right angles to the door, and striking the door with it at an acute angle would not be likely to produce the desired effect. However, it was better to try this which was at hand, than to do nothing at all. In the meantime some better means might be devised of bursting open the door. Once, twice, thrice, half-a-dozen times the men thrust the beam obliquely against the massive woodwork. It merely glanced off the thick stubborn oak, and more than two-thirds of its power was expended upon the solid and immovable stonework of the doorway. Other pieces of timber were brought, but all proved too long to be of any effective use. The shortest, it is true, could be brought into a horizontal position against the door, but it allowed of no play, and therefore was incapable of receiving the necessary impetus. Then the crowd began to clamour for sledges. A great, brown-bearded man, tall, lank, and rounded in the shoulders, broke away from the crowd crying: "I'll soon get it open; I'll soon break it in." This man was celebrated in Porter Street for his enormous strength. No sooner had he undertaken to burst in the door than all other efforts were suspended, in the full faith that he would make good his words. In a few moments he returned, bearing in each hand a square half-hundredweight. He hastened up to the door and said: "Someone must hold me." But how are they to hold him? "I want," he said, "to put my back against the door, lift these up this way" (he raised the half-hundreds above his head as though they were no heavier than boxing-gloves), "then I'll bring them down against the door; but if it bursts open I don't want to fall in, for there's a pit inside." The difficulty now was how to hold him, and at the same time give him free play with the weights, and avoid any possibility of the weights in the downward swoop touching anyone who might aid him. Some time was lost in trying to arrange so that he might be held, prevented from falling inward, and, at the same time, not impeded. At last he cried: "Let me alone; I can manage it myself. Stand back. Don't be afraid of me." Then they cleared a semicircle round him. He put his back to the door, raised his arms aloft, directly over his head, bowed himself backward, so that his head and heels alone touched the door, and his back was bowed forward as a bent bow is against the string. Then, setting his teeth and putting all the energy of his body into the muscles of his arms and shoulders, he swung the two weights downward with prodigious force, loosed them from his hold when they came level with his legs, sprang forward, and turned swiftly round with a look of expectant success. The crowd cheered. The two half-hundredweights had crushed through the lower portion of the door as though it were so much cardboard. The lock remained unshaken. The blows had been delivered too low down, and, while the wood had given way, the iron had remained firm. Then, while the people were standing admiring the result of his great strength, a man cried out: "Here's a crowbar, Bill. You can finish it with that." Bill caught the crowbar in his hand, whirled it over his head as though it were but a walking-cane, leaped back from the door as far as the narrowness of the lane would allow him; then, holding the crowbar lightly in his hand, as a soldier holds his gun at the charge, he dashed forward and flung the crowbar with its blunt edge against the place where the lock held fast. The lock had been loosened on the door by the previous assault, and now, with a tearing screech, the bolts drew out of the tough wood, and the door swung back on its hinges. When Bill had succeeded, and seen that he had succeeded, he turned round, surveyed the crowd steadily for a few moments, and then said: "That's my share of it. You do the rest." Then, as one who had no further concern with the matter, he strode off, the people making way for him as he went. Two or three men approached the door and looked in. Below was a wild jumble of planks and beams and stones and earth, all mixed up, higgledy-piggledy, in the wildest confusion. It was impossible to make out anything clearly at first, owing to the dense dust that floated in the air. The men who had thrust in their heads withdrew them after a short time, partly suffocated and partly blinded by the fumes that arose out of the pit beneath. "Ask is there anyone there," suggested one of the crowd. A head was thrust in through the open doorway, and a stentorian voice cried out: "Anyone there!" To this a feeble voice replied from what seemed to be the bowels of the earth: "Yes. Help. Water, for God's sake." "All right," shouted the man above. "We'll get you out safe enough. Keep up your heart. Are the two of you below?" "Yes," answered the feeble voice; "but he is dead. Quick, for God's sake, or I shall die. This dust is killing me." "Keep up," shouted the man, "and we'll do the best. We'll get you out in a jiffy. There's a hundred of us here. How much of the place has fallen?" "I don't know," answered the voice below, growing fainter. "I think only the first floor. I can talk no more. I am dying." And then came some sounds, inarticulate and faint, the meaning of which the man above could not gather. A ladder was got and thrust down into the pit, and in a short time a score of willing hands were at work. The joists had drawn gradually out of the wall, and the eastern end being first freed, that side fell downward, shooting most of the stones and earth up into the pit at the eastern side. The floor doubled up in two from the north and south, almost like the leaves of a book, and in the fold of this a large quantity of clay and stones had remained. This folded part fell almost directly on the hole made by Lionel Crawford in the roof of the vault. The weight of the stones and the impetus they had gained in their fall was sufficient to cause them to smash through the doubled-up flooring, and some of them fell through the hole, carrying with them a portion of the roof of the vault. By this falling mass Lavirotte had been struck and hurt, and under some of the flooring, earth, and stones he now lay partly covered, prostrate upon the ground of the vault. Owing to the fact that most of the heavy stones and the great bulk of the earth had been shot to the eastern side of the tower, comparatively little entered the vault, and so Lavirotte escaped instant death. The men working at his release found out after a short time, partly by his moaning and partly by looking through the hole in the fallen floor, that Lavirotte was in the vault, and not immediately under the fallen floor. In less than an hour he was rescued. He was all begrimed with dirt and clay, insensible, battered, bleeding, almost pulseless. He was immediately placed in a cab and taken to an hospital. On his way he recovered consciousness and begged for water, which was given him. Upon examination it was discovered that his injuries were not of much moment, and that exhaustion had more to do with his prostrate condition than the hurts he had received. For a long time he lay quiet, expressing no wish. At length he asked what had become of the body of his companion, and was told that it had been removed from the tower. He was asked if he had any friends with whom he desired to communicate, and he said no. Now that Lionel Crawford was dead, there was no one in London whom he could call a friend. He did not wish that Dora should hear anything of the result of that awful day, when her grandfather lost his life, and he all hope of the vast fortune upon which he had been building for some time. They told him that he would be able to leave the hospital in a few days. A few days would be quite time enough to tell her all the bad news. Indeed, the longer she was kept in ignorance of it the better. To the inquiries of those around him, he had refused to give any reply beyond the facts that St. Prisca's Tower was his property; that he and the dead man, Lionel Crawford, had for some time back lived in the tower; and that, for reasons which he declined to state, they had both been engaged in excavating. John Cassidy usually left his office at about four o'clock in the evening. As he was walking in the direction of his home on the afternoon Lavirotte was rescued from the tower, his eye was arrested by a line in the bills of The Evening Record-"Mysterious affair in Porter Street." As a rule, John Cassidy did not buy newspapers. They did not interest him. His theory was that one could learn enough of public affairs from the conversation of others. But a mysterious affair always did interest him, and in this case he bought The Evening Record, and read in it a brief paragraph of what occurred in the tower, giving the names of the two men concerned. Mystery on mystery! Here was this man Lavirotte mixed up in two inexplicable affairs in a space of a few months. On the previous occasion Lavirotte had been found insensible, near a wounded man. Now he was found insensible, near a dead man. In the paragraph there was no suggestion that any suspected foul play; and yet to him, Cassidy, it seemed impossible that Lavirotte was not in some way accountable for the death of the man found with him that day. Cassidy was burning with anxiety to tell someone of Lavirotte's former predicament. It would give him such an air of importance if he could add material facts to those already known in connection with this matter. There was no use in his going back to the office, for all his fellow-clerks had left. It was impossible for him to go home to his room burdened with this news. He therefore resolved to turn into the Cleopatra Restaurant in the Strand, in the hope he might there find someone to whom he might communicate the startling addition to the news in the evening paper. It so fell out that he succeeded beyond his wishes. He found a group of men standing at the bar, and among these one named Grafton, an artist whom he had known for some time, and through whom he hoped to find himself on the track of the Lavirotte mystery, as he knew Grafton was acquainted with Lavirotte. "I say, Grafton," said he, "that's a deuce of a mysterious thing that happened to-day in Porter Street. You know, of course, this is the Lavirotte you told me you knew. He's back in London again, after being mixed up in a most extraordinary affair in my part of the world." Then he related, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the group of men standing round, all he knew concerning the affair at Glengowra. When he had finished, one of the bystanders, whom he did not know, said: "You would have no objection to my making use of what you say?" "In the press?" said Cassidy, colouring with delight and importance. "Yes," said the other. "I am connected with The Evening Record, and if you authorise me to do so, I should be greatly pleased to add just a line to our account of the affair. All I would ask or say: 'We understand that M. Lavirotte, who was found insensible, was some little time ago mixed up with another mysterious affair in Glengowra, in the south of Ireland.'" Cassidy gave a willing consent, and the addition suggested appeared in the special edition of The Evening Record. It was in the special edition of The Evening Record that Dora Harrington saw her grandfather was dead, that Lavirotte was injured, and that he had been mixed up in a mysterious affair in Glengowra.