"
"Nonsense," said the president; "if we keep on we shall strike it. Did
not Dr. Syx himself admit that he found no free artemisium until his
tunnel had reached the core of the peak? We must go as deep as he has
gone before we give up."
"I fear the depths he attains are beyond most people's reach," was
Hall's answer, while a thoughtful look crossed his clear-cut brow,
"but since you desire it, of course the work shall go on. I should
like, however, to change the direction of the tunnel."
"Certainly," replied Mr. Boon; "bore in whatever direction you think
proper, only don't despair."
About a month after this conversation Andrew Hall, with whom a
community of tastes in many things had made me intimately acquainted,
asked me one morning to accompany him into his tunnel.
"I want to have a trusty friend at my elbow," he said, "for, unless I
am a dreamer, something remarkable will happen within the next hour,
and two witnesses are better than one."
I knew Hall was not the person to make such a remark carelessly, and
my curiosity was intensely excited, but, knowing his peculiarities, I
did not press him for an explanation.
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