She had already swum along three sides of the shaft, when, as she reached the fourth, her hand and arm passed in, and she uttered a cry of joy, striking out vigorously, and finding herself swimming in an opening for a few strokes, when she struck again against the rock, and the chill of the horror of impending death once more came upon her. After a few more vain struggles, she clung to the slimy rocks, feeling herself sink, and that life, now dearer than she could have believed, was ebbing away. But as she felt this her limbs rested upon the bottom of the opening into which she had swum, and she knew now that she was in the adit or passage that carried off the water from the old pit, when it reached a certain height. It was some minutes before she could subdue the trembling that shook her limbs, and summon courage enough to move, lest in that hideous darkness she should go the wrong way, and sink back into the deep water; but, as she grew more collected, she felt that if she crawled onward she would be right; and so it proved, for, dragging herself on to the rock, she was the next minute on the rough floor of the adit, kneeling in an inch or two of water; and here, sinking lower, she covered her face with her hands, thrust back her streaming hair, and burst into a passion of hysterical sobbing, as she prayed that she might be saved from this horrible death. She was mad almost with terror for the time, but by degrees she grew calmer, and, putting out her hands, she touched the walls on either side, and just above her head. "I know where I am," she said aloud, "only I'm frightened and confused, and--Oh, God of heaven, Madge's child!" Her hands went down to her breast as if expecting to find it clinging there, and then, chilled once more with horror, she remained there in the horrible darkness, afraid to move, as she tried to realise whether the little thing had fallen with her. She put her hands to her throat again. The cloak was gone--it had broken away at the fastening in her frantic struggles for life. She hesitated, but as she did so, she seemed to see the pale, white figure of Madge rising up before her, and saying to her, "Give me my child;" and, rousing herself to her terrible task, she slowly crept back into the water--in the shallow part within the adit--and waded step by step back three or four yards till, feeling cautiously with one foot before her, she found that she had reached the brink; another step, and she would be once more over the deep water, where it went down hundreds of feet into the bowels of the earth. She dared not swim out, but, holding by the rugged wall of the adit, she thrust out her hand along the surface, feeling as far as she could reach again and again, here and there, but there was nothing; and she crossed to the other side, held on, and tried again, feeling giddy as she did so, and as if she dared do no more lest she should step back into that horrible pit.