soon, for in an incredibly short time an inky flood rolled beneath it; rolled beneath, but seemed to keep pace with it as it arose. The water was coming up the shaft.

CHAPTER III

AT THE MOUTH OF THE SHAFT

Rutledge was standing by the windlass as the cage drew slowly up into the light. The men sprang out, not forgetting to lift me out with them, and the superintendent craned his neck, looking down into the black hole from which we had ascended. “Keep back!” he shouted, as some of the men crowded about him. “Keep back; the water is coming up the shaft. We’ll soon have a spouting geyser, at this rate. How many of you are there?” He glanced over the group and answered his own question, in an awed voice: “Seven—and the girl—God help us! Only seven!”

I had been so blinded by the fierce white glare of sunlight, following on the darkness of the shaft, and so dazed by the awful nature of the calamity that had befallen us that at first I comprehended almost nothing. The events of the day recorded themselves automatically upon my mind, to be clearly recalled afterward. In a numb, dazed way I saw a man in a light gray coat creep stiffly from the cage, last of all, and, as he staggered away up the dump, I took a step toward him, looked in his face, and recoiled with a wild, heart-broken cry.

The wearer of the coat was old Joe. Facing around, I looked on the rescued men, my heart beginning to beat in slow, suffocating throbs—my father was not among them.

For a moment I was quite beside myself. Like one gone suddenly mad, I sprang at the negro, and, seizing his arm, shook it furiously, crying:

“Father, father—where is my father? What have you done with my father?”

The old man began to whimper, “I ain’ done nuffin’! I wish’t I had! I wish’t hit was me dat done gone to respec’ dat ole Watkin’s Lateral, den I’d ’a’ been drownded, an’ he wouldn’t!”

“Watkin’s Lateral?” echoed one of the men who had so narrowly escaped. “Was Gordon in there? That’s where the water burst through first. I thought that some one might have gone in there to test the walls, and they’d given way.”

“You are probably right, Johnson. Not but what the walls would have caved in, just the same, whether they were struck or not.”

Little heed as I paid, at the moment, to what was going on or being said, yet it all impressed itself upon my mind, to be recalled afterward, and afterward I knew that this last observation of Mr. Rutledge’s was intended to exonerate father from any charge of carelessness in going into that place at just that time. But every employee of the Gray Eagle knew that Watkin’s Lateral—a long, diagonal passage, with which the main tunnel was connected by a number of side extensions—was a treacherous place in which to work at all times, and must, of necessity, have been trebly so this morning. Loosing my frenzied hold of old Joe, I crouched to the ground, while Joe sank down on the dump, covering his face with his gnarled old hands. “He made me tuck an’ put on his coat, he did, an’ tole me fur t’ start fur home; I was dat racked wid de misery in my back!” he moaned.

The men were again clustering about the shaft. I got up and went and stood beside them. A hollow roar came up from the depths into which we gazed. The black water had risen, and risen, until, touched by a ray of sunlight, it threw back at us a sinister, mocking gleam, as the eye of a demon might. And father was down there in that black grave! That was my one coherent thought as, after the first wild look, I suddenly grasped one of the ropes of the cage that still swung above the shaft’s mouth, and swung myself aboard. My reckless hand was on the starting lever when Mr. Rutledge, with a cry, and a spring as quick as my own had been, landed beside me. He snatched my hand from the lever. “Are you mad?” he asked, sternly, “What are you going to do?”

“I am going down to my father; I am going to bring him up!” I cried wildly.

As though the words had held a charm to break the spell of silence, they were followed by a babel of groans, of outcries and entreaties. It seemed that all the surface population of Crusoe were already on the spot; all, and especially the women, were wild to go to the rescue of the doomed men below. Doomed! Ah, they were past that now—all of them—all! It was this solemn thought that suddenly calmed me, that made me yield quietly to Rutledge’s guiding hand as he drew me from the cage. “There are men here,” he said. “Stand back, all of you women.” He took his place in the cage again; then he looked around on the assembled men.

“Dick,” he said, signalling out a square-built Scotch miner, “stand beside the hoist, and do exactly as I tell you.”

“I wull that!” returned the miner, taking the station indicated.

“I’m going down as far as the water will allow,” Rutledge explained. “Who comes with me?” A dozen men volunteered instantly. Rutledge selected two who stepped into the cage beside him.

“There may be fire-damp—gas,” the Scotchman said, warningly.

“I know; there is, probably; I’ll look out for that. Lower away!” Rutledge had lighted one of the miner’s candles which was suspended by a cord from a crack in the bottom of the cage. We above leaned over that dreadful well and watched the tiny flicker of light as the cage swung down and down toward the sinister eye that came steadily up as it went down. The tiny flame burned bravely for a space, then it went out as suddenly as if snuffed out by invisible fingers while the water below moved and sparkled as it might have done if the owner of the demoniac eye had laughed. “Choke damp!” said the Scotch miner succinctly, and began hoisting up.

I was crouching on the ground with my face hidden on Joe’s shoulder when the cage came up again. The men sprang out silently, and the hush on the waiting throng seemed to deepen.

“We will set the pumps at work as soon as it can be done; that is the only thing left for us to do,” I heard Rutledge say, and his voice sounded far away to my reeling senses as it might have sounded had I heard it in some dreadful vision of the night. Then he came and knelt down beside me; he took my hands in a close grasp. “Go home, Leslie,” he said, “go home and do not come back. We will do all that can be done.”

Not many hours thereafter the pumps were at work, lifting the water out of the mine—a Herculean task, but not so long a one, or so hopeless, as had been anticipated by many. Soon fresh mounds of earth began to appear in the lonely little hillside cemetery; mounds beneath which the rescued bodies of the drowned miners were reverently laid. Among them was one where father lay peacefully sleeping by mother’s side, and leaving him there at rest, we turned sadly away to take up again the dreary routine of our every-day life.

CHAPTER IV

A PLOT FOILED

It was a full month after the mine accident, and things had settled back as nearly into the old routine as was possible with the head of the household gone. I doubt if Jessie and I could have carried the burden of responsibility that now fell upon our unaccustomed shoulders had it not been for Joe. The day after father’s funeral he walked quietly into the kitchen with the