himself in darkness utter and
complete except for a pinpoint of light gleaming from far above. His
head was whirling and throbbing painfully. Something warm and moist
dropped into his eyes, and when he put his hand up to investigate the
cause he knew it must be blood from a wound.

Faintly the sound of voices and of harsh laughter drifted down to him.
Presently this died away. The stillness was almost uncanny.

"Something laid me out, I reckon. Must have been a bad whack." His
finger found a ridge above the temple which had been plowed through the
thick curly hair. "Looks as though a glancing bullet hit me. Golden luck
it didn't finish the job."

He moved. A sharp pain shot through his lower right leg. Trying to rise,
he slipped down at once from a badly sprained ankle. Every muscle in his
body ached, as if he had been jarred by a hard fall.

"Better have a look around first," he told himself.

Groping in his pocket, he found a match case and struck a light. What he
saw made him shudder. From the ledge upon which he lay fell away a gulf,
the bottom of which could be only guessed. His eyes, becoming accustomed
to the darkness, made out that he was in some sort of shaft, thirty feet
or more below the surface. Rotten from age, the timberings had slipped
and become jammed. Upon some of these he was resting. The sprained
ankle, by preventing him from moving, had saved him from plunging down
the well.

He held out a silver dollar and dropped it. From the time the coin took
to strike Jack judged he was a hundred feet from the bottom.

The flare of a second match showed him a wall ladder leading down, but
unfortunately it did not extend above him except in rotting fragments.
What had happened he could guess. Supposing him to be dead, his enemies
had dropped the body down this deserted shaft. Not for a moment did he
doubt who they were. The voices had been unmistakably Cornish, and even
without that evidence he would have guessed Peale and his partner as the
guilty ones.

Since he could not go up he went down, moving warily so as not to jar
loose the timbers upon which he lay. Every rung of the ladder he tested
with great care before he put his weight upon it. Each step of the
journey down sent a throb of pain from the ricked ankle, even though he
rested his weight on his hands while he lowered himself. From the last
rung--it was by actual count the one hundred forty-third--he stepped to
the ground.

Another match sh