I could not see the walls now; I could not hear the click of the windlass. All below was perfectly black; not a sign of a bottom; but white terraces, covered with stalagmite, gleamed up round the well-like ribs, catching a little light from above. With my hammer I broke off a large mass of deposit formed by the droppings of water largely impregnated with lime. It whizzed down, but still I heard no final splash. I shouted--only faintly, as the pressure on my lungs from the belt prevented my using my voice to its full extent--but the whole well seemed alive with echoes. I tried to turn my head and look up at the sky, but I was unable. The darkness and chill began to tell upon me, and an agonising cramp contracted my legs. However I managed to place my feet upon a ledge, and to stand up. Those working the windlass, feeling that the strain was off the rope, let out no more. When the cramp left me, I cast myself off again, and dropped below the ledge. After a while I began to hear a sound of falling water, and in a few minutes passed an opening in the side of the pit, out of which gushed an underground stream, and precipitated itself down the chasm. Now I became conscious of a broad ledge of rock, extending considerably out into the well, and contracting its size; something lay upon it--fragments of broken stalactites and stalagmites, I fancied--what they were I could not distinguish, especially as at the same moment that I saw them I perceived something black rising towards me. In one second I saw the face of the Boggart flash up at me full of hideous triumph, and I felt the grip of his arms about my waist. Next moment I lost all consciousness. When I came to myself I was lying in the sunshine on the slope above the pot--Hellen or Hull-pot is its name--with Keene and the farmer bending anxiously over me. "I'm all right," said I, in a low voice; and in a couple of minutes I was sufficiently recovered to sit up. I took off my hat, and away flew the butterfly I had rescued, oblivious of the hours of darkness and misery it had passed through. "Did you reach the bottom?" asked Keene. I shook my head. "We let out all the rope we had," said my friend, "and then we pulled up again, and found you at the end in a dead faint. I see you have not been idle," he added, lifting my geological bag. "Full of stalactites, I suppose," and as he shook it the contents rattled. "No," said I, "I put nothing into it." "Then how comes it filled?" he asked. "Why, halloo! what have we here?" and he emptied out of it a heap of human bones and a shattered skull. _How_ they got into the sack I shall never know. The remains were very old, and were encrusted with stalagmite. They lie now in Horton churchyard. I believe the Boggart has not been seen since. * * * * * * *