d still he pulled great rocks back
with his shovel. All his life he had fought for his own hand. He would
not let himself believe fate had played so scurvy a trick as to lock him
alive into a tomb closed so tightly that he could not pry a way out.

When his watch told him it was eight o'clock he staggered to the shaft
again and lay down on his back to rest. Before climbing to the platform
above he finished the sandwich. He was very hungry and could have eaten
enough for two men had he been given the opportunity. Again for hours he
called every few minutes at the top of his voice.

In his vest pocket were a pencil and a notebook used for keeping the
accounts of the highgraders with whom he did business. To pass the time
he set down the story of the crime which had brought him here and his
efforts to free himself.

After darkness fell he let himself down to the foot of the shaft and
slept. Either from hunger or from fever in his ankle he slept brokenly.
He was conscious of a little delirium in his waking spells, but the
coming of midnight found him master of himself, though a trifle
lightheaded.

It was impossible to work as steadily as he had done during the two
previous nights. Hunger and pain and toil were doing their best to wear
out his strength. His limbs moved laggardly. Once he fell asleep in the
midst of his labor. He dreamed of Moya, and after he awakened--as he
presently did with a start--she seemed so near that it would scarce have
surprised him if in the darkness his hands had come in contact with the
soft flesh of her vivid face. Nor did it strike him as at all odd that
it was Moya and not Joyce who was visiting him when he was in prison.
Sometimes she came to him as the little girl of the _Victorian_, but
more often the face he saw was the mocking one of the young woman, in
which gayety overran the tender sadness of the big, dusky eyes beneath
which tiny freckles had been sprinkled. More than once he clearly heard
her whisper courage to him.

Next day the notes in his diary were more fragmentary.

"Broke my rule and smoked two cigars to-day. Just finished my
fourth. Leaves one more. I drink a great deal. It helps me to
forget I'm hungry. Find a cigar goes farther if I smoke it in
sections. I chew the stubs while I'm working.

"Have tunneled in about seventeen feet. No sign that I'm near the
end of the cave-in. There's a lot of hell in being buried alive.

"Think I