it a minute, boy," the elder man said. "You're the owner here. It's
dangerous. I ought to be the one to go first and find out what's
happened. You wait inside the drift."

But Dick shook his hand off and stepped out to look upward. A dense
blackness filled what should have been a space of light. This he had
partially expected from the fact that when they came out toward the
shaft there had been no sign of day; but he had not anticipated such a
complete closing of the opening.

"Lord! We're buried in!" came an exclamation from behind him, and he
felt a sudden sinking of the heart.

"I'll go easily till I come to it," he said, his voice sounding
strained and loud although he had spoken scarcely above a whisper.
"You stand clear so that if anything gives, Bill, you won't be
caught."

The elder miner would have protested, but already he was slowly and
cautiously climbing the ladder. Step by step he ascended, holding the
light above his head to discover the place where the shaft had given
way, and then Bill, standing anxiously below, heard a harsh shout.

"I think the ladder will bear your weight as well as mine. Come up
here."

The big man climbed steadily upward until he stood directly beneath
the younger man's feet. He ventured an exclamation that was almost an
oath.

"Not the shaft at all," he said, an instant later. "It's just a
bowlder so big that it filled the whole opening. We're plugged and
penned in here like rats in a trap!"

Dick took his little prospecting hammer and tapped the bowlder, at
first gently, then with firmer strokes, and looked down at his partner
with a distressed face.

"Hear that?" he exclaimed, rather than questioned. "It's a big one,
and solid. It sounds bad to me."

For a minute they waved their candles round the edge, inspecting the
resting place of the rock that had imprisoned them. Everywhere it was
set firmly. A fitted door could have been no more secure. They
consulted, and at last Bill descended and stepped back into the
entrance to the drift to avoid falling stone, while the younger man
attacked the edge beneath the bowlder, inch by inch, trying to find
some place where he could pick through to daylight. At last, his arm
wearied and the point of his prospecting hammer dulled, he rested.

"Come down, Dick, and I'll take a spell," Bill called up from below,
and he obeyed.

The big miner, without comment, climbed up, and again the vault-like
space was filled with the persis