In Which Mr Headstone Performs An Astounding Feat Of Moral Wonder

A large crowd gathered at Old Hell Shaft in the expectation that the rescue of the stranger from the pit would provide some diversion from the rote of their daily lives. It had been established by a surgeon, who had been lowered down by a windlass, that the gentleman had miraculously sustained no injury in the fall, and was suffering from nothing more than a headache occasioned by the accidental displacement of a clod of earth. When all was ready, the brewer’s horse was harnessed to the rope, which was wound around the barrel of the windlass. The dray man led the beast on, and the rope tightened and strained to its utmost, and ring upon ring was coiled upon the barrel safely, and the connecting chains appeared, and finally at first the head and then the upper body of Mr. Headstone came into view. The crowd let out a loud hurrah. This had the unfortunate effect of startling the horse, which bolted, and drew the pedagogue out of the pit with the velocity that is commonly attained by a cork when released from a bottle of champagne. Mr. Headstone sailed over the heads of the astonished crowd and landed in a patch of bramble and nettles, and all agreed that not even the tumblers from Sleary’s Circus could match the feat for its daring and prestidigitation.

In Which The Value Of An Education Is Demonstrated

On observing Mr. Headstone’s precipitate departure from the bank, the light porter had decided to follow the stranger under the vague suspicion that he might be an accomplice in the lately discovered crime. Bitzer maintained a prudent distance between himself and the object of his pursuit as he followed him out of the town. Once in open country he was obliged on occasion to throw himself bodily to the ground to avoid detection and make use of such natural cover (such as stinging nettles and bramble bushes) that availed itself to him. His determination to keep his quarry always in his view was unexpectedly thwarted by the sudden disappearance of the gentleman in question, as if he had been swallowed up by the very bowels of the earth. Coming up to the spot, Bitzer discovered a hat lying on the grass and found the words ‘Bradley Headstone’ written on the inside. He recognised the ground and approached the lip of the shaft cautiously, crawling forward on his belly to peer over the edge into the darkness. He called out the name he had read on the inside of the hat and was gratified to receive an echoing groan by way of response. Having had the benefit of an education in which facts were the constant prevailing theme, Bitzer recalled that it was possible to determine the depth of any depression within the earth by tossing into it a solid object and waiting for the sound of its impact. He therefore took a clod from the broken ground and threw it into the gloom. Some moments afterwards there came a sharp report and then a coughing and spluttering such as an individual might make if he had accidentally ingested some foreign matter not entirely pleasing to the taste. Young Bitzer’s experiment left him none the wiser and he determined to return to the town for assistance, which he did with as much expedition as his short legs and the necessity of relieving his hunger with a visit  to the pastry shop would allow.

A Pastoral Interlude

Deprived of his rightful inheritance - a good portion of which he had already spent - Mr. Headstone deemed it politic to quit Coketown before his creditors were apprised of his reduced pecuniary state. Without waiting for any further explanation of the facts of the case from Mr. Bounderby (the gentleman with the great puffed head), the pedagogue left the bank and walked down the street in the opposite direction to the railway station, resolving to evade pursuit by making his way across open country. The landscape beyond the town was blotted here and there with heaps of coal, and mounds where the grass was rank and high, and where nettles, brambles, and dock-weed were confusedly heaped together. The local people knew to avoid these clumps of vegetation; for dismal stories were told in that country of the old pits hidden beneath such indications. Following an untrodden way, Mr. Headstone was obliged to beat his own path with a length of stick, and so absorbed was he by these exertions that he failed to observe a rotten sign by the wayside on which was painted the legend Old Hell Shaft. The pedagogue would have missed the opportunity of viewing this celebrated local landmark had not chance intervened by directing his footsteps to the very brink of a black ragged chasm, hidden by the thick grass, into which he fell as soundlessly as a stone dropped into a deep well.