d he was after it with all his heart and
soul and bodily powers.

For months he had been following up a vein which ran out under the sea,
and grew richer and richer as he laid it bare. He believed it would lead
him to the mother vein, and that to the heart of all the Sark silver.
And so he toiled, early and late, and knew no weariness.

His tunnel, in places not more than three and four feet high and between
two and three feet wide, extended now several hundred feet under the
sea, and was fitted at the gallery end with the usual raised iron door.

It was hot work in there, in the dim-lighted darkness, in spite of the
fact that the sea was close above his head. Fortunately, here and there,
he had come upon curious little chambers like empty bubbles in one-time
molten rock, ten feet across and as much in height, some of them, and
curiously whorled and wrought, and these allowed him breathing spaces
and welcome relief from the crampings of the passage.

When he had broken into such a chamber it needed, at times, no little
labour to rediscover his vein on the opposite side. But he always found
it in time, and broke through the farther wall with unusual difficulty,
and went on.

The men generally worked in pairs, but old Tom would have no one with
him. He did all the work, picking and hauling the refuse single-handed.
The work should be his alone, his alone the glory of the great and
ultimate discovery.

The rocks above him sweated and dripped at times, but that was only to
be expected and gave him no anxiety. Alone with his eager hopes he
chipped and picked, and felt no loneliness because of the flame of hope
that burned within him. Above him he could hear the long roll and growl
of the wave-tormented boulders--now a dull, heavy fall like the blow of
a gigantic mallet, and again a long-drawn crash like shingle grinding
down a hillside. But these things he had heard before and had grown
accustomed to.

And so it was fated that, one day, after patiently picking round a great
piece of rock till it was loosened from its ages-old bed, he felt it
tremble under his hand, and leaning his weight against it, it
disappeared into space beyond.

That had happened before when he struck one of the chambers, and he felt
no uneasiness. If there had been water beyond, it would have given him
notice by oozing round the rock as he loosened it. The brief rush of
foul gas, which always followed the opening of one of these hollows, he
a