'How foetid its atmosphere is! That door has not been open for an age, and may be closed for as long again. No one ever comes here.' Peering downward, as if into a well, they saw the outlines of their heads reflected in a little pool of water at the bottom, but how far down it was impossible to say. 'Once upon a time,' said Allan, 'when parts of the Carse of Gowrie were under water, in wet seasons especially, it flowed in here, how no one knew, unless through fissures in the rock, and drowned like a rat any luckless wight who was thrown in to be--to be----' 'What?' 'Forgotten. So the phrase went then; hence its name.' 'And do you mean to say that no one who was dropped into that confounded hole ever came up again?' 'Yes.' 'Were their cries not heard?' 'No; the walls around are so thick, and the bottom is in the living rock on which Dundargue stands.' 'By Jove!' exclaimed Holcroft again, as if perplexed, so much so that he had let his cigar grow cold. 'And their bones?' he asked, after a pause. 'Were found in quantities by certain explorers, who went down with torches, some years ago. I have not looked into this place for years--not since I left for the regiment in India,' said Allan, stooping, somewhat dangerously--and, to Holcroft's sudden idea, somewhat temptingly--over the dangerous profundity, into which he was striving to peer. With all the rapidity of light, many terrible thoughts now crowded into the mind of Holcroft. He hated Allan Graham with deadly rivalry and hate combined. Never again, in the desperation of his affairs, might he have the chance of an introduction to such a prize as Olive Raymond, or be on such a footing, as he had recently found himself with her. He loathed Allan for all Allan possessed, and, as we are told, 'a coward who knows himself to be at once despised but unchastised, for a woman's sake, can hate.' If he lost his chances with Olive, beggary stared him in the face; drops of perspiration started to his forehead, and chance now confirmed his diabolical resolution. The gloomy fiend was uppermost, his revenge, and perhaps future triumph, stood embodied before him. He did not pause, and all these dire thoughts occurred to him in less than the space of one vibration of a pendulum. Had the Master of Aberfeldie turned sharply round he might have read in Holcroft's white face an expression that was not pleasant to look upon just then--the face of one that would work him mischief if he could; but the unwitting Allan was doing what he had not done since boyhood, he was peering with vague curiosity into the profundity below. A fury, a clamorous anxiety, seemed to blaze up in the heart and brain of Holcroft, who was a practised 'bruiser,' and he suddenly gave Allan an awful blow under the left ear--a blow hit right out from the shoulder--that shot him headlong into the vault.