mmy!"

"Yes, Master Mark, I was took with 'em as soon as I got as far as the
powder store. It all come at once."

"What do you mean?"

Dummy was perfectly silent, but not perfectly still; for as he stared
straight in Mark's face in a peculiarly stolid way, he kept on swinging
and jerking his legs till he seemed as if some one was pulling a string
to make him act like a jumping toy.

"Look here, stupid-head," cried Mark angrily, but only to break into a
laugh, half of amusement, half of vexatious contempt, "are you going
mad?"

"I dunno, Master Mark. Perhaps I am. There's something keeps on
buzzing in my head like a wheel going round."

"You've been out too much in the sun."

"No, I aren't. I've been down the mine in the dark."

"And got frightened?"

"Not as I knows on, Master Mark. It's the thinks."

"Here, what do you mean, thick-head? I can't stop here listening to
your nonsense."

"'Taren't nonsense, Master Mark," said the boy, giving him a peculiar
stare.

"What is it, then?"

"I want to know where that water goes to yonder in the mine."

"What! do you mean to say you've had me fetched out to tell me that?"

Dummy nodded, and Mark doubled his fist.

"I've got it, Master Mark."

"Got what, you idiot?"

"We're up ever so much higher here than they are at Ergles, yonder,
aren't we?"

"Higher? Of course," said Mark, looking at the lad curiously; "but what
of that?"

"That's what I wanted you to tell me, Master Mark, and that's it then."

"What's what then?"

"Why, that water in the mine where we went along, and was under us when
we went to sleep--that goes along under ground, right under the
moorland, and it comes out again in Ergles Dale."

"Do you think it goes in that direction?"

Dummy nodded.

"Well, but suppose it does, what then?"

"I'm sure it does now, Master Mark, and what the thinks have made me
see's this: if you and me had kept going on instead of sitting down, and
eating and drinking till we went fas' asleep, we should have found
ourselves in Ergles Hole, and if it hadn't been for the Purlrose gang,
we might have worked back 'bove ground."

"Why, Dummy! I don't know--yes, if it's that way--goes for miles. I
say, perhaps you're right."

"Yes, I'm right," said the boy quietly; "but you don't jump about a bit:
you aren't glad."

"Glad? Jump about? Why should I? Oh!"

"Haw--haw--haw!" laughed Dummy. "He can see it now. Why, it come to
me, Master Mark, l