rned smooth as a dream, and
Collins nudged me with fierce satisfaction. But I was suddenly sick with
horror. Not at the thing we were doing--if it were devil's work we had
been driven to be devils--but at the knowledge that Paulette was
standing within reach of my feet, that were through the stope wall and
were hanging down into Collins's tunnel,--that tunnel every bone in me
knew was amateur, unsafe, a death trap. The shock of a big explosion in
Thompson's stope might well bring its roof down on Paulette, standing
alone in it, waiting,--trusting to me for safety. I turned my head and
yelled at her as a man yells at a dog--or his dearest--when he is sick
with fear for her: "Get back out of that into the cave! _Run!_"

I heard her jump. Heard her----But thought stopped in me, with one
unwritable, life-checking shock. The whole earth, the very globe, seemed
to have blown to pieces around me. The flash and roar were like a
thousand howitzers in my very face; the solid rock shelf I was on leapt
under me; and behind me the whole of Collins's tunnel collapsed, with a
grinding roar. I heard Collins gasp, "Good glory"; heard the rocks and
gravel in the stope before me settling, with an indescribable,
threatening noise, between thunder and breaking china--and all I thought
of was that I'd warned my dream girl in time, that she'd answered me,
that she was back in Collins's cave, and safe. Till, suddenly to eyes
that had been too dazzled and seared to see it clearing, the smoke
before me cleared, the choking fumes lessened, and I saw. Saw, straight
in front of me, where a tunnel had been and was no longer, a clean hole
like a barn door where Thompson's tunnel entrance had been but two-men
wide; saw out, into furious, crimson color that turned slowly, as my
sight grew normal, into the golden, dazzling glory of winter sun on
snow.

There was silence outside in the sun, all but some yells and moaning.
How much damage we'd done I couldn't see; or where Macartney's men were,
dead or alive. But now, while they were paralyzed with shock and
surprise, now was my time to get through them. I lowered myself gingerly
to the rubbish heap that had been the smooth floor of Thompson's stope;
edged to the tunnel entrance; slipped my feet into the toe and heel
straps of the snowshoes I had held tightly against me through all the
unspeakable, hellish uproar of rending rock, and sprang,--sprang out
into the sunlight, out on the clear snow, past woun