He approached the place where it had been; it was nothing but
common earth. He put his foot upon it; he stamped; it was as
solid as any other part of the State.

"And yet I have looked down into it," he ejaculated, "at least
half a dozen feet!"

When Bryce turned and went back to Clewe, he too was pale.

"I do not wonder you fainted," said he. "I do not believe it was
what you saw that upset you; it was what you expected to see
--wasn't that it?"

Clewe nodded in an indefinite way. "We won't talk about it now,"
said he. "I don't want any more experiments to-day. We will
cover up the instrument and go."

When Roland Clewe reached his room, he sat down in the
arm-chair to think. He had made a grand and wonderful success,
but it was not upon that that his mind was now fixed. It was
upon the casual and accidental effect of the work of his
invention, of which he had never dreamed. Bryce had made a great
mistake in thinking that it was not what Roland Clewe had seen,
but what he had expected to see, which had caused him to drop
insensible. It was what he had seen.

When the master-workman had approached the lighted space upon the
ground, Clewe stood opposite to him, a little distance from the
apparatus. As Bryce looked down, he leaned forward more and
more, until the greater part of his body was directly over the