e. Seconds, minutes, and other minutes--and his
brain ran red in dumb, silent madness. And the watch! It _ticked, ticked,
ticked!_ It was like a hammer.

He had heard the sound of it first coming up through her hair. But it was
not in her hair now. It was over him, about him--it was no longer a
ticking, but a throb, a steady, jarring, beating throb. It grew louder,
and the air stirred with it. He lifted his head. With the eyes of a madman
he stared--and listened. His arms relaxed from about Joanne, and she
slipped crumpled and lifeless to the floor. He stared--and that steady
_beat-beat-beat_--a hundred times louder than the ticking of a
watch--pounded in his brain. Was he mad? He staggered to the choked mouth
of the tunnel, and then there fell shout upon shout, and shriek upon shriek
from his lips, and twice, like a madman now, he ran back to Joanne and
caught her up in his arms, calling and sobbing her name, and then
shouting--and calling her name again. She moved; her eyes opened, and like
one gazing upon the spirit of the dead she looked into the face of John
Aldous, a madman's face in the lantern-glow.

"John--John----"

She put up her hands, and with a cry he ran with her in his arms to the
choked tunnel.

"Listen! Listen!" he cried wildly. "Dear God in Heaven, Joanne--can you not
hear them? It's Blackton--Blackton and his men! Hear--hear the rock-hammers
smashing! Joanne--Joanne--we are saved!"

She did not sense him. She swayed, half on her feet, half in his arms, as
consciousness and reason returned to her. Dazedly her hands went to his
face in their old, sweet way. Aldous saw her struggling to understand--to
comprehend; and he kissed her soft upturned lips, fighting back the
excitement that made him want to raise his voice again in wild and joyous
shouting.

"It is Blackton!" he said over and over again. "It is Blackton and his men!
Listen!--you can hear their picks and the pounding of their rock-hammers!"

CHAPTER XX

At last Joanne realized that the explosion was not to come, that Blackton
and his men were working to save them. And now, as she listened with him,
her breath began to come in sobbing excitement between her lips--for there
was no mistaking that sound, that steady _beat-beat-beat_ that came from
beyond the cavern wall and seemed to set strange tremors stirring in the
air about their ears. For a few moments they stood stunned and silent, as
if not yet quite fully comprehending tha