r gang of swarthy Italians are
bound to have a demoniac aspect underground."

It was more careless than intentional that Gerald thus provoked Ravelli.
There had been dislike between them, growing out of friction between
their respective duties as a civil engineer and a sub-contractor, for
the former was necessarily a critic of the latter's work. But they had
never quarreled, and Gerald saw nothing in this occasion, as Ravelli
seemed to, for any outbreak of temper.

"Bettare be civ-vil with-a your tongue," Ravelli sneered.

"Well, I think so, too, as we are with a lady."

"Zat ees why-a I inseest you treat-a me as one gentleman."

So it seemed that he was especially regardful of how he figured in the
presence of Mary Warriner.

"Like one gentleman? Oh, I will treat you like two gentlemen--so
politely;" and Gerald began to again nonchalantly whittle the birchen
pole. "I was going to tell how, when at last we broke through the rock
at this end of the tunnel, I happened to be right there. A blast tore
out an aperture several feet wide. We saw daylight through the smoke. We
rushed pell-mell over the broken stone, and struggled with one another
to get through first. It was--why, it was you, Ravelli, wasn't it?--whom
I tussled with. Yes, we got into the breach together. You tried to push
me back. You couldn't--of course, you couldn't;" and the narrator's
reference to his own superior strength was exasperatingly accompanied by
a glance not free from contempt.

"Eet was-a all een fun," Ravelli smilingly explained to Mary, and then
his eyes turned darkly upon Gerald: "Eef eet had-a been one ear-nest
fight----," the different result was vaguely indicated by a hard clinch
of fists and a vicious crunch of teeth.

It was beyond a doubt that Ravelli could not bear to be belittled to
Mary; but she and Gerald were alike inattentive to his exhibition of
wrath.

"No prisoner was ever more exultant to escape," Heath went on, "than I
was to get out of that dark, noisome hole into clean sunlight. I ran to
this very spot, and--well, the landscape was on view, just as it is now.
It was like getting from gloom out into glory."

The young man's exuberant words were not spoken with much enthusiasm,
and yet they had sufficient earnestness to prove their sincerity. He had
stopped whittling, and his knife lay on the desk, as he turned his back
against the sapling and rested both elbows on it.

"So I've been writing to the president of t