as the others did. I should have
known better, I suppose, than to go yelling out our discovery at the top
of my lungs, but knowing's one thing and doing's altogether different.
I've seen miners on the Lakekamu shouting themselves hoarse over even
less of a discovery, seasoned men who knew how and when to hold their
tongues. Could tyros like ourselves be blamed for what we did? I don't
think so.

"That's the funnel right enough," Cumshaw said. "There can't possibly be
two of the same kind in the same district. I'm sure this is the one;
it's been described too often to me for there to be any mistake about
it. But what's puzzling me is the valley. There doesn't seem to be much
of one here. All I can see is wattles, wattles whichever way I look."

"There's one way to settle it," I said in an aside to him, and I looked
at Moira.

He gathered from my warning glance that I had something to say I didn't
want her to hear, so he shifted out of earshot with me.

"There's things you don't want a girl to see," I explained as we walked
off; "but if this is the valley the skeletons of those two horses should
be down there somewhere," and I pointed over the edge of the funnel.

"I'll go down," he said with alacrity. "I guess it's my go. It's time I
took some sort of a risk."

"You surely don't expect there'll be anything wrong?" I queried.

"I can't say," he answered with a shrug of his shoulders. "Anyway, I
think you'd better get back to Miss Drummond. She's looking over this
way, and in a minute or so she'll be asking awkward questions, if you
don't go and tell her something."

"All right," I agreed. "Look as slippy as you can, but be careful. An
injured man is always more or less of a nuisance, you know."

He grinned cheerfully at that, and then, without another word, turned on
his heel and made off towards the funnel. I walked back to Moira.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked me suspiciously. "What's Mr.
Cumshaw after?"

"He's going down through that funnel-shaped thing," I answered. "He
wants to see what's at the end of it."

The golden-brown eyes regarded me thoughtfully for a space and then:
"Why didn't you go yourself instead of sending him?" she asked.

"It was his suggestion," I said defensively. "He seemed to think he had
a better right than anyone else, so I didn't argue with him about it. I
let him go."

"We could all have gone," she hinted.

"We could have," I agreed, "but we didn't."

In the m