not want to tell him.

"I should think so! The timbers gave way and the mine caved in!"

"Not that! My father ran away from this town. You and Mother Howard
helped him. You didn't come back. Neither did my father. Eventually
it killed him."

"So?" Harry looked seriously and studiously at the young man. "'E did
n't write me of'en."

"He did n't need to write you. You were here with him--when it
happened."

"No--" Harry shook his head. "I was in town."

"But you knew--"

"What's Mother Howard told you?"

"A lot--and nothing."

"I don't know any more than she does."

"But--"

"Friends did n't ask questions in those days," came quietly. "I might
'ave guessed if I 'd wanted to--but I did n't want to."

"But if you had?"

Harry looked at him with quiet, blue eyes.

"What would you guess?"

Slowly Robert Fairchild's gaze went to the ground. There was only one
possible conjecture: Sissie Larsen had been impersonated by a woman.
Sissie Larsen had never been seen again in Ohadi.

"I--I would hate to put it into words," came finally. Harry slapped
him on the shoulder.

"Then don't. It was nearly thirty years ago. Let sleeping dogs lie.
Take a look around before we go into the tunnel."

They reconnoitered, first on one side, then on the other. No one was
in sight. Harry bent to the ground, and finding a pitchy pine knot,
lighted it. They started cautiously within, blinking against the
darkness.

A detour and they avoided an ore car, rusty and half filled, standing
on the little track, now sagging on moldy ties. A moment more of
walking and Harry took the lead.

"It's only a step to the shaft now," he cautioned. "Easy--easy--look
out for that 'anging wall--" he held the pitch torch against the roof
of the tunnel and displayed a loose, jagged section of rock, dripping
with seepage from the hills above. "Just a step now--'ere it is."

The outlines of a rusty "hoist", with its cable leading down into a
slanting hole in the rock, showed dimly before them,--a massive,
chunky, deserted thing in the shadows. About it were clustered drills
that were eaten by age and the dampness of the seepage; farther on a
"skip", or shaft-car, lay on its side, half buried in mud and muck from
the walls of the tunnel. Here, too, the timbers were rotting; one
after another, they had cracked and caved beneath the weight of the
earth above, giving the tunnel an eerie aspect, uninviting, dangerous.
Harry