and they might come in handy."

Bill protested, but despite this Dick went back to the quarters and
got them. They were crude, apparently, compared with the later work
when competent engineers had opened the mine in earnest; but doubtless
had served their purpose. The men came to the mouth of the old shaft
which had been loosely covered over with poles, and around which a
thicket of wild blackberry bushes had sprung up in stunted growth. An
hour's work disclosed the black opening and a ladder in a fair state
of preservation. They lowered a candle into the depths and saw that it
burned undimmed, indicating that the air was pure, and then descended
cautiously, testing each rung as they went. The shaft was not more
than fifty feet deep, and they found themselves standing on the bottom
and peering off into a drift which had been crudely timbered and had
fallen in here and there as the unworked ground had settled.

"There doesn't seem to be much of anything here except some starved
quartz," Bill said, staring at the wall after they had gone in some
thirty or forty feet, and they had come to a place where the lagging
had dropped away. He caught another piece of the half-rotted timbering
and jerked it loose for a better inspection. It gave with a dull
crack, then, immediately after, and seeming almost an echo, there was
a terrific rumble, and a report like the explosion of a huge gun back
in the direction of the shaft. Their candles flickered in the air
impact, and for an instant they feared that the roof was coming down
on them to crush them out of all resemblance to human beings.

They turned and ran toward the shaft. A few loose pebbles and pieces
of rock were dripping from above like a shower of porphyry. For an
instant they dared not step out, but stood inside the drift, waiting
for what might happen and staring at each other with set faces exposed
in the still flickering light. They had said nothing up to this time,
being under too great stress to offer other than sharp exclamations.

"Sounds like that shaft had given way!" the veteran exclaimed. "If it
has----"

He leaned forward and looked into Dick's face.

"If it has," the latter took up, "we are in a bad predicament."

They stood tensed and anxious until the pebbles stopped falling and a
silence like that of a tomb, so profound as to seem thick and dense,
invaded the hollows; then Dick started out into the shaft. He felt a
restraining hand on his arm.

"Wa