As
the project calls for courage and, above all, a good condition of body
and mind, I shall be obliged to you if you will allow me the benefit of
the sleep I most certainly need. To-morrow I may have something more to
say to you, and I may not. Perhaps I shall want to make _my will_, who
knows?" And with a smile full of sarcastic meaning, he pushed Mr.
Harper's arm aside and made for the staircase, up which he presently
vanished without another attempt on the lawyer's part to hold him back.
A few minutes later the lawyer was getting what information he could
about the so-called Devil's Cauldron.
It seems that this was a very deep hole in which, on account of the rocky
formation surrounding it, the water swept in an eddy which had the force
of a whirlpool. No one had ever sounded its depths and nothing had ever
been seen again which had once been sucked into its deathly hollow. That
Georgian's body had found its everlasting grave there, many had believed
from the first, and if the conviction had not yet been publicly expressed
it was out of consideration for Mr. Ransom, to whose hopes it could but
ring a final knell.
"Where is the hole? How far from the waterfall?" queried Mr. Harper.
"A good mile," muttered one man. "Quite around the bend of the stream.
It's a horrid place, sir. We've always been mortal careful about rowing
down that side of the river.
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