which they might lower themselves into the
shaft, with various bumpings and delays,--but which worked
successfully, nevertheless. Together they piled into the big, iron
bucket. Harry lugging along spikes and timbers and sledges and ropes.
Then, pulling away at the cable which held the weights, they furnished
the necessary gravity to travel downward.

An eerie journey, faced on one side by the crawling rope of the skip as
it traveled along the rusty old track on its watersoaked ties, on the
others by the still dripping timbers of the aged shaft and its broken,
rotting ladder, while the carbide lanterns cast shadows about, while
the pulley above creaked and the eroded wheels of the skip squeaked and
protested! Downward--a hundred feet--and they collided with the
upward-bound skip, to fend off from it and start on again. The air
grew colder, more moist. The carbides spluttered and flared. Then a
slight bump, and they were at the bottom. Fairchild started to crawl
out from the bucket, only to resume his old position as Harry yelled
with fright.

"Don't do it!" gulped the Cornishman. "Do you want me to go up like a
skyrocket? Them weights is all at the top. We 've got to fix a plug
down 'ere to 'old this blooming bucket or it 'll go up and we 'll stay
down!"

Working from the side of the bucket, still held down by the weight of
the two men, they fashioned a catch, or lock, out of a loop of rope
attached to heavy spikes, and fastened it taut.

"That 'll 'old," announced the big Cornishman. "Out we go!"

Fairchild obeyed with alacrity. He felt now that he was really coming
to something, that he was at the true beginning of his labors. Before
him the drift tunnel, damp and dripping and dark, awaited, seeming to
throw back the flare of the carbides as though to shield the treasures
which might lie beyond. Harry started forward a step, then pausing,
shifted his carbide and laid a hand on his companion's shoulder.

"Boy," he said slowly, "we 're starting at something now--and I don't
know where it's going to lead us. There's a cave-in up 'ere, and if we
're ever going to get anywhere in this mine, we 'll 'ave to go past it.
And I 'm afraid of what we 're going to find when we cut our wye
through!"

Clouds of the past seemed to rise and float past Fairchild. Clouds
which carried visions of a white, broken old man sitting by a window,
waiting for death, visions of an old safe and a letter it contained.
For a