o much harm. I was at the bank to-day."

"Yeh."

"My balance is just two hundred."

"Counting what we borrowed from Mother 'Oward?"

"Yes."

Harry clawed at his mustache. His nose, already red from the pressure
of blood, turned purplish.

"We 're nearing the end, Boy. Tackle the foot wall."

They said no more. Fairchild withdrew his drill from the "swimmer" or
straightforward powder hole and turned far to the other side of the
chamber, where the sloping foot wall showed for a few feet before it
dived under the muck and refuse. There, gad in hand, he pecked about
the surface, seeking a spot where the rock had splintered, thereby
affording a softer entrance for the biting surface of the drill. Spot
after spot he prospected, suddenly to stop and bend forward. At last
came an exclamation, surprised, wondering:

"Harry!"

"Yeh."

"Come here."

The Cornishman left his work and walked to Fairchild's side. The
younger man pointed.

"Do you ever fill up drill holes with cement?" he asked.

"Not as I know of. Why?"

"There 's one." Fairchild raised his gad and chipped away the softer
surface of the rock, leaving a tubular protuberance of cement
extending. Harry stared.

"What the bloody 'ell?" he conjectured. "D' you suppose--" Then, with
a sudden resolution: "Drill there! Gad a 'ole off to one side a bit
and drill there. It seems to me Sissie Larsen put a 'ole there or
something--I can't remember. But drill. It can't do any 'arm."

The gad chipped away the rock. Soon the drill was biting into the
surface of the foot wall. Quitting time came; the drill was in two
feet, and in the morning, Fairchild went at his task again. Harry
watched him over a shoulder.

"If it don't bring out anything in six feet--it ain't there," he
announced. Fairchild found the humor to smile.

"You 're almost as cheerful as I am." Noon came and they stopped for
lunch. Fairchild finished the remark begun hours before. "I 'm in
four feet now--and all I get is rock."

"Sure now?"

"Look."

They went to the foot wall and with a scraper brought out some of the
muggy mass caused by the pouring of water into the "down-hole" to make
the sittings capable of removal. Harry rubbed it with a thumb and
forefinger.

"That's all," he announced, as he went back to his dinner pail.
Together, silently, they finished their luncheon. Once more Fairchild
took up his work, dully, almost lackadaisically, pounding away at