"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.