agment of
copper rock, evidently taken from the loaded car close at hand, and
flung from that direction. Several other similar pieces were picked up
near where the two men had defended themselves, and, now that
Trefethen had time for reflection, he recalled having heard these
crash against the wall behind him.

Who had flung them was a mystery, as was the cause of the attack on
Peveril. Even the identity of his assailants seemed likely to remain
unrevealed, for these had slipped away in the darkness, and though the
rescuing party searched the level like a swarm of angry hornets, they
could not discover a man bearing on his person any signs of the recent
fray.

In the gloom shrouding the scene of conflict, Mark Trefethen had not
been able to recognize those with whom he fought, but only knew them
to be foreigners and car-pushers. It afterwards transpired that a
number of these had, on that evening, made their way to a shaft a mile
distant, and so gained the surface. One of them was reported to have
had his head tied up as the result of an accident, but no one had
recognized him.

While certain of the Cornishmen searched the mine, Trefethen and
others bore the still unconscious form of Richard Peveril to the plat,
and sounded the alarm signal of five bells. Nothing so startles a
mining community as to have this signal come from underground. It may
mean death and disaster. It surely means that there are injured men to
be brought up to the surface, and the time elapsing before their
arrival is always filled with deepest anxiety.

It was so in the present case, and when the cage containing the two
battered miners, one of whom had also every appearance of being dead,
emerged from the shaft, a throng of spectators was waiting to greet
it.

These learned with a great sigh of relief that there had been no
accident, but merely a fight, in which the men just brought up were
supposed to be the only ones injured. Their revulsion of feeling led
many of the spectators to treat the whole affair as a joke, especially
as the only person seriously hurt was a stranger.

"It's always new-comers as stirs up shindies," growled a miner who,
having reached the surface a few minutes earlier, formed one of the
expectant group. "They ought not to be let underground, I say."

"How about Trefethen?" asked a voice. "He's no new-comer."

"Oh, Mark's a quarrelsome old cuss, who's always meddling where he has
no call."

"You lie, Mike Conne