e.

He sat down for a few minutes to rest, and then started on his return.
It seemed to be taking so much more time to get back that he feared he
had passed the door-way by which he had entered the heading. But he
came to it at last and stopped there.

He began to feel hungry. He wondered why he had not thought to look
for some one's dinner pail, before he came over into the old mine. He
knew that his own still had fragments of food in it; he wished that
he had them now. But wishing was of no use, the only thing for him
to do was to push ahead toward the surface. When he should reach his
mother's house his craving would be satisfied with all that could
tempt the palate.

He started on again. The course of the heading was far from straight,
and his progress was very slow.

At last he came to a place where there had been a fall. They had
robbed the pillars till they had become too weak to support the roof,
and it had tumbled in.

Ralph turned back a little, crossed the air-way and went up into the
chambers, thinking to get around the area of the fall. He went a long
way up before he found an unblocked opening. Then, striking across
through the entrances, he came out again, suddenly, to a heading. He
thought it must have curved very rapidly to the right that he should
find it so soon, if it were the one he had been on before. But he
followed it as best he could, stopping very often to catch a few
moments of rest, finding even his light oil-can a heavy burden in his
hands, trying constantly to give strength to his heart and his limbs
by thoughts of the fond greeting that awaited him when once he should
escape from the gloomy passages of the mine.

The heading grew to be very devious. It wound here and there, with
entrances on both sides, it crossed chambers and turned corners till
the boy became so bewildered that he gave up trying to trace it. He
pushed on, however, through the openings that seemed most likely
to lead outward, looking for pathways and trackways, hungering,
thirsting, faint in both body and spirit, till he reached a solid wall
at the side of a long, broad chamber, and there he stopped to consider
which way to turn. He struck some object at his feet. It was a pick.
He looked up at the wall in front of him, and he saw in it the
filled-up entrance through which he had made his way from the Burnham
mine.

It came upon him like a blow, and he sank to the floor in sudden
despair.

This was worse than