nvas-backed paper; "I must be about here; and if so, according to
this plan the old mine workings might be reached through this gallery,
or this, or this."

He ran his finger along the different lines drawn in red ink, and was
studiously considering how it would be best to proceed if he could win
his father, and, through him, the other proprietors, to his plans, when
all at once he started up, listening attentively, for it seemed to him
that he could hear a sound as of some one working with pick or bar away
ahead of the place where he was seated, and not back in the yielding
seams of the pit.

_Tap_, _tap_, _tap_! Yes, there it was plainly enough, and from a part
of the pit where there could be no working going on.

What could it be? Nobody would be in that end of the mine. It was
completely deserted. He did not believe anyone had been in that part of
the great maze for months; there was nothing to bring a pitman there.

"Now if I were a superstitious fellow," said Philip to himself, "and
ready to believe in ghosts and goblins, I should run back and spread the
news that this part of the pit is haunted by the restless spirit of some
poor pitman who lost his life here years ago, and comes back to work.
But I don't believe in that sort of story, and I'm going to see what it
means."

All the same he felt very much startled; for it seemed so unaccountable
for anyone to be there. The men would be in the regular seams. There
was nothing to bring them here; and as they toiled at piece-work, they
would not lift a pick except to hew out coal. No overman would be here
without his knowledge; and try how he would to find some reason for the
sound, he was still at fault. The only possibility was that, in some
peculiar way the echo of a hewer's pick ran along the silent galleries,
to be reverberated from this distant wall.

"Impossible!" he said, doubling up his map and replacing it in his
breast, as he rose and took up his lamp.

"It is impossible!" he said again, as _tap_, _tap_, _tap_, the regular
stroke as of a pick was heard, and with no small feeling of trepidation
he went to search out the cause of the unusual sound.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

PARKS'S MARK.

Before he had gone far he became aware that the noise came from the old
gallery that he had marked down as being the most likely to lead nearest
to the workings of the ancient pit, and, after carefully peering down
it, he held his lamp above his head to gaze i