L. No; for there is no room for dust. The pressure is too great; probably the heat developed also so great that the rock is made partly ductile; but the worst of it is, that we never can see these parts of mountains in the state they were left in at the time of their elevation; for it is precisely in these rents and dislocations that the crystalline power principally exerts itself. It is essentially a styptic power, and wherever the earth is torn, it heals and binds; nay, the torture and grieving of the earth seem necessary to bring out its full energy; for you only find the crystalline living power fully in action, where the rents and faults are deep and many. DORA. If you please, sir,--would you tell us--what are "faults"? L. You never heard of such things? DORA. Never in all our lives. L. When a vein of rock which is going on smoothly, is interrupted by another troublesome little vein, which stops it, and puts it out, so that it has to begin again in another place--that is called a fault. _I_ always think it ought to be called the fault of the vein that interrupts it; but the miners always call it the fault of the vein that is interrupted. DORA. So it is, if it does not begin again where it left off. L. Well, that is certainly the gist of the business: but, whatever good-natured old lecturers may do, the rocks have a bad habit, when they are once interrupted, of never asking "Where was I?" DORA. When the two halves of the dining-table came separate, yesterday, was that a "fault"?