“I s’pose it’s going yet,” reflected Mickey, after listening several minutes, “and no doubt it will kaap on till it comes out somewhere in Chiny, which I’ve been told is on t’other side of the world.  Now, why could n’t we do the same?” he asked himself, with a sharp turn of the voice.  “If that stone is on its way to Chiny, why can’t we folly on after it?  If we can’t reach the crust of the world at this point, what’s to hinder our going round by Chiny?—­that’s what I’d like to know.  I wonder how long it would take us?  I s’pose we’d get up pretty good steam, and go faster and faster, so that we wouldn’t be many days on the road.

“But there’s one great objection,” he added, scratching his head and knitting his brow with thought.  “There’s nothing to stop us from bouncing from side to side like that stone.  If the way is rough, we’d be pretty sartin to get our breeches pretty well ripped off us, and by the time we raiched Chiny, we wouldn’t be in a condition to be presented in coort; and then, too, I haven’t enough money about me to pay my way home again.”

The visionary scheme was one of those which grew less in favor the more he reflected upon it, and, after turning it over for some minutes longer, he was naturally compelled to abandon the idea.

“I must try the stream agin,” he said, as he rose to his feet and groped his way back.  “That seems to be the best door, after all, though it ain’t the kind I hanker after.”

He thrust one end of the torch in the ground some distance away, and walked to the bank close to the great rock beneath which the stream dove and disappeared.  Stooping down, he observed the same dull, white appearance that had caught his eye in the first place.  Beyond question this was caused by the sunlight striking the water from the outside.

“I could almost swear that a feller wouldn’t have to go more than twenty feet before he’d strike daylight,” mused Mickey, as he folded his arms and looked thoughtfully at the misty relief of the surrounding darkness; “and it would n’t take much more to persuade me to make the dive and try it.”

As Mickey stood there, contemplating as best he could the darkly flowing stream, and debating the matter with himself, he was on the very eve of making the attempt fully half a dozen times.  It seemed to him that he could not fail, and yet there was something in the project which held him back.

The stream at that point flowed quite rapidly, and the strongest swimmer, after venturing a few feet under water, would be utterly unable to return.  Once started, there would be no turning back, so he concluded not to make the decisive trial just yet.

“The day is pretty nearly ended, and I will drame over it.  I told me laddy that that was my favorite way of getting out of such a scrape, and I’ll thry it.  If there’s no plan that presints itself by to-morrow, then I’ll thry it then or the day after.”