rd--at
last to make a small opening in the barricade, and to lean close to it
that he might shout again. But still there was no answer.

Feverish now, Fairchild worked with all the reserve strength that was
in him. He seized great chunks of rock that he could not even have
budged at an ordinary time and threw them far behind him. His pick
struck again and again with a vicious, clanging reverberation; the hole
widened. Once more Fairchild leaned toward it.

"Harry!" he called. "Harry!"

But there was no answer. Again he shouted, then he returned to his
work, his heart aching in unison with his muscles. Behind that broken
mass, Fairchild felt sure, was his partner, torn, bleeding through the
effects of some accident, he did not know what, past answering his
calls, perhaps dead. Greater became the hole in the cave-in; soon it
was large enough to admit his body. Seizing his carbide lamp,
Fairchild made for the opening and crawled through, hurrying onward
toward the chamber where the stope began, calling Harry's name at every
step, in vain. The shadows before him lengthened, as the chamber gave
greater play to the range of light. Fairchild rushed within, held high
his carbide and looked about him. But no crumpled form of a man lay
there, no bruised, torn human being. The place was empty, except for
the pile of stone and refuse which had been torn away by dynamite
explosions in the hanging wall, where Harry evidently had shot away the
remaining refuse in a last effort to see what lay in that
direction,--stones and muck which told nothing. On the other side--

Fairchild stared blankly. The hole that he had made into the foot wall
had been filled with dynamite and tamped, as though ready for shooting.
But the charge had not been exploded. Instead--on the ground lay the
remainder of the tamping paper and a short foot and a half of fuse,
with its fulminate of mercury cap attached, where it had been pulled
from its berth by some great force and hastily stamped out. And Harry--

Harry was gone!

CHAPTER XX

It was as though the shades of the past had come to life again, to
repeat in the twentieth century a happening of the nineteenth. There
was only one difference--no form of a dead man now lay against the foot
wall, to rest there more than a score of years until it should come to
light, a pile of bones in time-shredded clothing. And as he thought of
it, Fairchild remembered that the earthly remains