voided by lying flat on the ground until he felt the air about him
sweeter again.

Then, enlarging the aperture with his pick, he scrambled through into
this chamber now first opened since time began.

It was like many he had seen before, but considerably larger. Holding
his light at arm's length, above his head, a million little eyes
twinkled back at him as the rays shot to and fro on the pointed facets
of the rock crystals which hung from the roof and started out of the
walls and ground.

The gleaming fingers seemed all pointed straight at him. Was it in
mockery or in acknowledgment of his prowess?

For, in among the pointing fingers, it seemed to him that the
silver-bearing veins ran thick as the setting of an ancient jewel,
twisted and curling and winding in and out so that his eyes were dazzled
with the wonder of it all.

"A man! A man at last! Since time began we have awaited him, and this
is he at last!" so those myriad eyes and pointing fingers seemed to cry
to him.

And up above, the roar and growl of the sea sounded closer than ever
before.

But he had found his treasure and he heeded nought beside. Here, of a
surety, he said to himself, was the silver heart from which the
scattered veins had been projected. He had found what he had sought with
such labours and persistency. What else mattered?

And then, without a moment's warning--the end.

No signal crackings, no thin jets or streams from the green immensity
beyond.

Just one universal collapse, one chaotic climacteric, begun and ended in
the same instant, as the crust of the chamber, no longer supported by
the in-pent air, dissolved under the irresistible pressure of the sea.

Where the sparkling chamber had been was a whirling vortex of bubbling
green water, in which tumbled grotesquely the body of a man.

The water boiled furiously along the tunnel and foamed into the gallery.
The wooden supports of the iron door gave way; the door sank slowly into
its appointed place.

Old Tom Hamon was dead and buried.

CHAPTER X

HOW YOUNG TOM FOUND HIS MATCH

The news spread quickly.

Tom Hamon heard it as he sat brooding over his wrongs and cursing the
chicken-heartedness and fear of consequences which had robbed him of his
revenge.

He started up with an incredulous curse and tore across the Coupee to
the mines to make sure.

But there was no doubt about it. Old Tom was dead: the six weeks were
still two days short of their fulfilm