him, he was allowed to purchase, on credit, two
blue-flannel shirts, a suit of brown canvas, a pair of heavy hobnailed
shoes, two pairs of woollen socks, a hard, round-topped hat, a
dinner-pail, and a miner's lamp. As these things were, by order of the
timber boss, charged to "Dick Peril," that was the name under which
our young Oxonian began his new life and became known in the strange
community to which erratic fortune had led him.

On the following morning he sallied forth from the Trefethen cottage
with a tin dinner-pail on one arm, his working-suit under the other,
and uncomfortably conscious that he was curiously regarded by every
person whom he met on his way to the mine. As the "Dry" was already
overcrowded, he shared Tom's locker, and was grateful for the
opportunity of changing his clothing in the comparative seclusion of
the compressor-room rather than in company with the two hundred men
who thronged the steam-heated building devoted especially to that
purpose.

Having assumed his new garments, and feeling very awkward in them,
Peveril made his way to the shaft-mouth. There he was joined by Mark
Trefethen, who regarded the change made in his protege's appearance
with approving eyes. Together, and in company with a stream of men
talking in a bewildering Babel of tongues, they climbed flight after
flight of wooden stairs to the uppermost floor of the tall
shaft-house.

An empty cage that had just deposited its load of copper conglomerate
was again ready to descend into the black depths, and, hurrying
Peveril forward, Mark Trefethen, with half a dozen other miners,
entered it. An iron gate closed behind them and a gong clanged in the
engine-house.

"Hold fast, lad, and remember there's no danger," was all that the
timber boss had time to say. Then the bottom seemed to drop out of
everything, and Peveril, experiencing the sickening sensation of
having left his stomach at the top of the shaft, found himself rushing
downward with horrible velocity through utter blackness. Instinctively
reaching out for something by which to hold on, he clutched a
rough-coated arm, but his grasp was rudely shaken off, and a gruff
voice bade him keep his hands to himself.

He could not frame an answer, for his brain was in a whirl, his ears
were filled with a dull roaring, and a whistling rush of air caught
away his breath. The motion of the cage was so smooth and noiseless
that after a while he could not tell whether it were