long, long moment, there was silence. Then came Harry's voice
again.

"I 'm afraid it ain't going to be good news, Boy. But there ain't no
wye to get around it. It's got to come out sometime--things like that
won't stay 'idden forever. And your father 's gone now--gone where it
can't 'urt 'im."

"I know," answered Fairchild in a queer, husky voice. "He must have
known, Harry--he must have been willing that it come, now that he is
gone. He wrote me as much."

"It's that or nothing. If we sell the mine, some one else will find
it. And we can't 'it the vein without following the drift to the
stope. But you're the one to make the decision."

Again, a long moment; again, in memory, Fairchild was standing in a
gloomy, old-fashioned room, reading a letter he had taken from a dusty
safe. Finally his answer came:

"He told me to go ahead, if necessary. And we 'll go, Harry."

CHAPTER XIII

They started forward then, making their way through the slime and silt
of the drift flooring, slippery and wet from years of flooding. From
above them the water dripped from the seep-soaked hanging-wall, which
showed rough and splotchy in the gleam of the carbides and seemed to
absorb the light until they could see only a few feet before them as
they clambered over water-soaked timbers, disjointed rails of the
little tram track which once had existed there, and floundered in and
out of the greasy pockets of mud which the floating ties of the track
had left behind. On--on--they stopped.

Progress had become impossible. Before them, twisted and torn and
piled about in muddy confusion, the timbers of the mine suddenly showed
in a perfect barricade, supplanted from behind by piles of muck and
rocky refuse which left no opening to the chamber of the stope beyond.
Harry's carbide went high in the air, and he slid forward, to stand a
moment in thought before the obstacle. At place after place he
surveyed it, finally to turn with a shrug of his shoulders.

"It's going to mean more 'n a month of the 'ardest kind of work, Boy,"
came his final announcement. "'Ow it could 'ave caved in like that is
more than I know. I 'm sure we timbered it good."

"And look--" Fairchild was beside him now, with his carbide--"how
everything's torn, as though from an explosion."

"It seems that wye. But you can't tell. Rock 'as an awful way of
churning up things when it decides to turn loose. All I know is we 've
got a job cut out