He did not care. He was certain the joists would not break. They showed no sign of chipping or splitting, and, in perfect fearlessness, he went on piling up the clay, taking, of course, the ordinary precaution to keep the weight as close as possible to the wall. Gradually, however, owing to the inclination towards the centre, the clay slid slightly inward, and, as it dried in the hot air of August, the inner surface of the clay fell inward. Before leaving the tower, the morning he got O'Donnell's letter, Lavirotte looked anxiously at the floor of the first loft. It was now concave above, convex below. But although he looked long and anxiously, he could see no sign of any of the joists giving way. "They will bend like yew," he said. "They will never break." He had omitted one calculation, that when they had bent to a certain degree, they would be withdrawn to a certain extent from their holdfasts in the wall, and when they were withdrawn from their holdfasts beyond a certain extent, they would slip out. On the morning of the day after Lavirotte was entombed in the vault beneath St. Prisca's Tower, the joists of loft number one had been so far withdrawn from their supports in the wall that the loft was in equilibrio, and ten pounds more pressure on the floor would drag the whole loft down with all its burden into the hole beneath. CHAPTER IV. 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.