"
"Well! well!" I broke in, greatly astonished by Hall's singular
recital, "you must have thought Dr. Syx was a cross between an
alchemist and an astrologer."
"Note this," said Hall, disregarding my interruption, "the hours when
the engine worked were invariably the hours during which the moon was
above the horizon!"
"What did you infer from that?" "Of course, I inferred that the moon
was directly concerned in the mystery; but how? That bothered me for a
long time, but a little light broke into my mind when I picked up, on
the mountain-side, a dead bird, whose scorched feathers were bronzed
with artemisium, and sometime later another similar victim of a
mysterious form of death. Then came the attack on the mine and its
tragic finish. I have already told you what I observed on that
occasion. But, instead of helping to clear up the mystery, it rather
complicated it for a time. At length, however, I reasoned my way
partly out of the difficulty. Certain things which I had noticed in
the Syx mill convinced me that there was a part of the building whose
existence no visitor suspected, and, putting one thing with another, I
inferred that the roof must be open above that secret part of the
structure, and that if I could get upon a sufficiently elevated place
I could see something of what was hidden there.
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