but the
drillings will be saved for assay, and I tell you the plan is that we
shall tell no tales out of school. Believe me, that cage will not be
safe again till as much stock shall be taken in as is needed by those
in control."

"And so," said Browning, "when we get to the surface our little money
will not buy enough stock to make it any object."

"I have been thinking of that," said Sedgwick, "and it makes me hot, for
all day I have been dreaming of doubling my money."

"I have a notion," said Browning, "to try to work my way out on the
ladders."

"That will not work," replied Sedgwick; "I looked, and all the lower
ladders have been taken down."

Then a long silence followed, until at last Sedgwick spoke again. "I
have it, Jack," said he. Lighting his candle, he groped around in the
cross-cut, and found a splinter from a lagging. Fishing out a stump of
a pencil from the pocket of his pantaloons, he said, "Where is your
money, Browning?"

"In the California Bank," he replied.

"All right," was the response. Then on the splinter he wrote for a
moment, and then said, "How is this?" and in a whisper read: "California
Bank, Please pay to John W. Mackay whatever funds may be to our
respective credits."

"What is your idea, Jim?" asked Browning.

"I mean to lay for Mackay, and when he comes down ask him, quietly, to
read the writing when he gets up into daylight."

"But what will he think we want?" asked Browning.

"He will know mighty quick," said Sedgwick; "he knows where we work; he
will understand that we know what we see, and that while we do not intend
to give away the information, at the same time we do not want to 'get
left out in the cold' on this deal."

"What think you he will do?" asked Browning.

"If he believes it safe, and the right kink is on him, he will draw our
money and buy us some stock," said Sedgwick. "He made his money that way,
and it is not long since he was a timberman on this same lode."

"Why not word it differently, and ask him squarely to buy the stock?"
asked Browning.

"Why, Jack," was the reply, "that would be a dead give-away. He would
never present such an order at the bank. It would be a notice to every
man in the bank and every friend of every man in the bank, and that would
mean everybody in town, that the miners who were kept down in the deeps
were trying to buy the stock of the mine. I would rather risk it this
way."

"All right, everything goes," said Browning,