'em with a bit of luck and the Lord
to guide his feet. Then he considered how far it might be to the bottom,
and dropped a piece of stone or two, and was a good bit heartened to find
the distance weren't so very tremendous. In fact he judged himself to be
about half-way down and reckoned that another thirty feet or thereabout
would get him to the end. He took off his coat then and flung it down; and
next he started, with his heart in his mouth, to do or die.

Amos Gregory promised himself that nought but death waited for him down
beneath, and he was right enough for that matter. How he got down without
breaking his neck he never could tell, but the pit sloped outward from
below and he managed to find foothold and fingerhold as he sank gingerly
lower and lower. A thousand times he thought he was gone. Then he did fall
in good truth, for a wedge of granite came out in his hand; but to his
great thankfulness, he hadn't got to slither and struggle for more than a
matter of another dozen feet, and then he came down on his own coat what
he'd dropped before him. So there he was, only scratched and torn a bit,
and like a toad in a hole, he sat for a bit on his coat and panted and
breathed foul air. 'Twas dark as a wolf's mouth, of course, and he didn't
know from Adam what dangers lay around him; but he couldn't bide still
long and so rose up and began to grope with feet and hands. He kicked a
few of the big stones that Ernest Gregory had thrown down, as he thought
atop of him; and then he found the bottom of the hole was bigger than he
guessed. And then he kicked a soft object and a great wonder happened.
Kneeling to see what it might be, he put forth his hand, touched a
clay-cold, sodden lump of something, and found a sudden, steady blaze of
light flash out of it. He drew back and the light went out. Then he
touched again and the light answered.

By this time Amos had catched another light in his brain-pan and knowed
too bitter well what he'd found. He groped into the garments of that poor
clay and found the light that he'd set going was hid in a dead man's
breast pocket. Then he got hold of it, drew out an electric torch and
turned it on the withered corpse of his elder brother. There lay Joe and
the small dried-up carcase of him weren't much the worse seemingly in that
cold, dry place; but Amos shivered and went goose-flesh down his spine,
for half the poor little man's face was eat away by some unknown beast.

Joe's broth