a club snatched from one of them, he reached the lowest point
of the tapering fissure.

"Ha! There he goes, in spite of his teeth," tremored a younger boy.

"His teeth aren't chattering!" Pem's eyes--lightning-blue--hurled back
the charge.

The denial rang in Stud's ears as he thrust his head into the black
opening, entering, amidships, as the former muddle-headed explorer had
done.

"That girl's a trump--the girl with eyes the color of the little
'heal-all', that blue flower we pick up here in May! A trump! But so's
little Jess, too!"

Thus did Stoutheart, a knight of to-day, pay tribute to the world he
left behind him, when he felt in his exploring knees, now creeping along
the bottom of the Tinker's Pot, that there was a chance of his leaving
it behind forever.

"I don't see what else he _could_ have done," said Tanpa, the
Guardian, her fingers hysterically interlocking. "Somebody had to go up;
and he's the oldest boy--a Patrol Leader. But, oh! I wish my husband
were here. Run and meet him, a couple of you!" She glanced appealingly
at the scouts. "Oh! do--and hurry him back--back from the spring."

Meanwhile Stud had forgotten even his backers in the feminine hearts
below and was banking all on just one trusty ally--the headlight on his
breast.

"Without the light, the little safety lamp, I couldn't do-o it," he told
himself. "Gee! but it is as black in here as Erebus, a Tinker's Pot,
indeed--the blindest passage--blindest bargain--I ever struck! So--so
sharp underneath, too!"

Yes, difficulty masked was in the "bargain", yet he crept on over
tapering ridges of rock that now and again buckled like teeth. But he
knew by the parched sound of his own voice, as he shouted a question,
that his courage might have ended in smoke, there and then, if it
weren't for the little lamp at his breast.

So rosily it burned now, in here, that its feeding oil seemed the red
blood of his heart!

"Anyhow--anyhow, with it, I'll be able to see which way the cat jumps!"

Here, Stoutheart more tightly gripped the club; the last words might
prove more than mere figure of speech.

From ahead came strange, gurgling, choking sounds, rising from
somewhere--growing weaker.

"Where--where are you, Ruddy? Answer! R-rap--rap out something, if you
can!" he adjured.

And it was--truly--a rapping reply that reached him; a queer, hollow
knocking at the door of some throat that semed shutting.

"My word! What on earth ... what in t