For a while Lavirotte sat on the floor of that vault, immovable. He was confounded, stunned. He found himself confronted by three terrible facts. There was no treasure here. Here was the dead body of Lionel Crawford. Here was he himself entombed. When he closed the door of the tower, he locked it on the inside, and put the key in his pocket. How was anyone to find out he was here? Lionel Crawford had told him that during all the months and months he had lived in that place no one, to his knowledge, had ever rapped at the door. Was it likely anyone would rap now? And, if anyone did, what use would the rapping be? From the top of the vault to the threshold of the door was at least twenty feet; and he was twelve feet below the top of the vault. And all day long, around and about the base of St. Prisca's Tower the heavy traffic of one of the great waterside streets groaned and screeched and murmured, continually pierced by the shouts and oaths of men, until such a dull, dead, loud tumult reared itself against the walls of the tower that no single human voice could by any possibility be, in the daytime, heard without from where he now sat. By night things would not improve. If he happened to be on a level with the door leading from the tower into the lane, he could, no doubt, hear the footfall of the infrequent policeman. But here, thirty feet down, and with the concave shield of the vault between him and the doorway, and the massive door between him and the lane, it would be insanity to expect he could hear so slight a sound. There, it is true, dangled the rope through the hole. He could read the last chapter in the life of Lionel Crawford by the aid of that rope. Would someone else, years, ay perhaps a century hence, be able to read the last chapter of his life by the aid of what would then remain of that rope? He saw how it had been with the dead old man. During his (Lavirotte's) absence, Crawford's pickaxe had struck upon the roof of the vault. Crawford then felt that the labours of his life were at an end. While he (Lavirotte) was sleeping, the old man must have worked like a giant. They had found the floor above the vault a few days ago. Now, here was hard against the steel pick the very stone that kept the treasure from the old man's eyes. He could see Crawford stoop in the dim light of the lantern, lean over his pick, grovel under his shovel, panting, praying, sweating, until a large space of the stonework of the roof had been cleared. Then he could see the ardent, eager, tremulous haste of the old man as, bit by bit, he picked out the mortar from between the stones, until at last he had freed one stone, and succeeded in getting it out of the bed in which it had lain for centuries. To enlarge the orifice was a matter of no great labour or time. He simply put his arm through the hole, and swung a sledgehammer against the roof-stones until he had loosed them. Then he removed them one by one, making the opening big enough to allow him to descend. When all was ready for going down he went up to one of the lofts and fetched a rope, tied one end of this rope to the foot of the ladder that dipped into the pit, or to several of the larger stones, or to the handles of one of the baskets filled with earth--to something which would more than counterpoise his weight. Then, taking the lantern with him, and the hopes of years and the certainty of success, he had lowered himself into that blind void, in the full belief that within a minute from the time he began the descent he would be in possession of one of the largest treasures ever discovered by man on earth. He had slid down that rope. He had in all likelihood done as he (Lavirotte) had done--swung the lantern hither and thither, round and round, until he had found out that the vault was empty, the treasure had been carried away, or had never been deposited there at all. Then the shock had, no doubt, been too much for the overwrought nature, and the broken spirit of Lionel Crawford had fled. There was no reason to suppose that any vapours of the place had killed him, for while he died the light in the lantern lived. Man has taken the wolf and made a servant of him. Man has taken the fox and made a servant of him. He has called the two when fused, the dog. Man has taken the heat of the sun and the blaze of the volcano, and has called the two when fused, fire. They are both his especial slaves. They are both his especial prerogatives. The dog is his creature. Fire is his creature. Neither exists without him. Either will die where he cannot live. The light of the lantern had outlived Crawford, which showed that he had not died of any exhaled or infiltrated poisonous gas. Shock or exhaustion had killed the old man. What was to kill him, Lavirotte? Hunger? He shuddered and looked around. How horrible the thought of dying of hunger; there, within thirty feet of one of the great ways that, from early to late, was crammed and choked with all kinds of simple or rich or rare or exquisite food, endlessly moving westward for the sustentation of the great city. To die of hunger there, when the freight of one huge van now lumbering by would preserve a whole regiment from starving for a week, would give him enough food for years. To die of hunger there within five hundred yards of five thousand people, not the humblest of whom would refuse to share with him his crust, if that humblest of the upper earth but knew how dire his extremity. To die of hunger there, with money in his pocket, when, within a stone's throw of the door of that tower, there were ten places whose only business was to supply food, not to those who were absolutely hungry in the sense of their approaching death through hunger, but to those who were hungry in the ordinary trivial routine of the day. It seemed horrible. He took down his hands from before his eyes, and looked with horror around him. To be alone without any chance of delivery and in danger of death is bad, seemingly almost the worst condition in which a man could find himself; but to be alone, beyond succour, threatened by death, and in the presence of the already dead, is ten thousand times more appalling. In the former case we know to a certainty, we are assured beyond doubt that we shall die, but the realisation of death is unfixed and' shadowy. We have, ever since we can remember, known we should die. We have seen death, touched death, kissed the dear dead, seen the dead put finally away in the cold envicinage of earth. But few have sat looking at the dead, waiting for death. Here to Lavirotte death was approaching. There to Lavirotte was an exemplar of the dead. As that was, he should be. The whole blue vault of heaven should vanish. The whole sweet plains and dales and hills of earth should be to him no more. No more to him than to that lying there now before him. Hope and love and joy and friendship, and the sweet commune with the great body of sympathetic man, where experience had first developed, expectancy had first arisen, and vague and splendid imaginings had had their hint and form, should all, all evanesce. Here, upon what was to have been the completion of their joint great work, was to be no reward, but their joint death. Of old he had smiled at Crawford's enthusiastic belief in this buried treasure. Then he had come to share Crawford's beliefs and hopes. Now he had come to share Crawford's despair and grave. Out of that vault there was no chance he should ever go alive. The friends whom he had striven to serve would believe him to have been a foolish braggart or a vicious liar. The girl whom he was to wed would know no more of his fate than though a whirlwind had plucked him up and cast him, unseen by man, into the middle of the sea. There would be no record of him when all was over, until, perhaps, a century hence reference would be made somewhere to his bones. It was hotter here than above-ground, much hotter. To die of hunger was, he had always heard, one of the most painful of deaths. Yet here was he caged in by all adversity, destined to end his life for want of such things as no man above-ground need die for lack of, since, when all man's individual enterprise was marred or put away, the State stepped forth and said he shall not die for need of mere bread. It was much hotter here than in the cool broad streets, fenced with places where one could get wholesome food, and get that wholesome food--cheap. The sky was above those streets. He had seen the sky as he drove along the Strand and Fleet Street to-day. The sky was blue, and to wave one's arms upwards towards it was to feel refreshed and cool. Cool--cool--cool. It was getting hotter. As he had come along the Strand that evening he had thought he would stop the cab at one of those many, many shops that hedged the way, and get a drink of something deliciously cool and bitter to take away the thirst which that wine had put upon him. But then he was so eager to reach the tower, he had forborne. Now he was sorry. He had had only two glasses of that wine, and two such small glasses were very little good to quench thirst when one was thirsty. How much better it would have been for him to have taken a whole pint of milk, or cold, clear, sparkling water. If he had had either of these---- The place was getting hotter and hotter. He looked at the candle in the lantern. It was burning low. In an hour he should be in the dark. What a pity he had not bought a lemon for a penny. How strange seemed the difference between a penny here and a penny in the Strand or Fleet Street a little while ago. He had gold and silver in his pocket, and although he thought to himself as he drove along, "Why should I give a penny for a lemon, when I know as soon as I get to the tower I shall be able to have as much water as I desire for nothing?" now he was in the tower, and he knew that on one of the lofts above was water more than any man could drink in many days, and yet he would have given all the silver he had in his pocket for one pint. The heat seemed to increase. He stood up. His limbs were scarcely strong enough to support him. His strength had left him wholly. He looked up at the opening over his head. He clutched the rope. He pushed his arms up as far as they would reach, then raised his feet from the ground. The hands would not support the body. The rope slipped through them. He fell awkwardly upon the hard floor of the vault. A subtle dust rose from the floor. It filled his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He rose into a kneeling posture. He pressed his eyelids down with his fingers. He blew the dust from his nose. He thrust out his dry parched tongue, and sought to clear it of the dust with the back of his hand. But his hand, too, was dusty, dry. Oh, if he might have but one wineglassful of the water in the loft above! Just one wineglassful to clear his mouth of the hideous dryness, and the still more hideous dust of two hundred years. Just so much water as would suffice to lave the parched portions of his mouth, and carry away the foul savour. He had heard that to die of hunger was painful. He had heard that to die of thirst was madness. Was he to die of thirst?