h,
and he had only to relieve himself of the clinging bramble to be able to
climb up into safety.

But he was weak and exhausted now, and it took a greater effort than he
expected before he sank down upon his knees amongst the mossy growth and
thanked God for his escape.

A young and healthy man soon recovers from a shock, and before long
Philip Hexton was on his way back to his home, with the exultant feeling
upon him that the risk he had run was for the benefit of his fellows,
for he could see now the way to provide, at a very moderate cost, a
second shaft to their own pit.

There it was already made. It was only a question of acquiring some
fifty or a hundred acres of worthless land with the old pit workings,
and the ridding of those workings from water. They had galleries in
their own mine that he knew nearly reached those of the old, and to
drive from one to the other was the simplest of things.

The very next day, provided with the old map of the mine, which he had
been studying half the night, he descended the shaft with one of the
shifts of men, and, providing himself with a lamp, he set off alone to
explore some of the old workings which had been given up in consequence
of the dread that at any time the ancient mine might be tapped and their
own pit flooded by the enormous gathering of water.

It was a long and dreary journey, one which no one saw him undertake,
for the men went off at once to their work; and after going down two or
three of the long black passages Philip felt a strange sense of
hesitation about going farther.

It was not, he told himself, that he was afraid of journeying alone
there in the dark; and, armed as he was with one of the best of the
Davy-lamps, he had no fear of gas; the choke-damp there was no occasion
to mind, as that followed an explosion; but all the same he felt such a
hesitation as he had never, even on his first descent, felt before.

"I must be shaken by my adventure," he said to himself laughing; and he
considered for a moment or two whether he should go back and get one of
the overmen for a companion.

He gave up the idea, though, directly, and went on, forcing himself to
master the nervous sensation and to do his duty like a man.

There were miles of galleries in the pit, and it was no light task to
make a way through mud and water between the crumbling walls. Here and
there great patches of the roof had tumbled down, and in places he found
that the masses o