other way on, you know, the tater coming
up and not going down for when I got feeling you about you was both
warm.

"`Out o' the way, dog,' I says, for she kept licking of you both, and I
feels to find out which was you, and soon found that out, because Shock
had such a rough head; and then I says to myself, `Which shall I send up
first?'

"I did think o' sending Shock, so as to make him open the hole a bit
more; but I thought p'raps the top'd fall in with sending the first one
up, and you was more use than Shock, so I made the rope, as was loose,
fast round your chest, and then I shouts to 'em as I lifted you up.

"`Haul steady,' I shouts, and as the rope tightened hoisted you more and
more, till you went up and up, and I was shoving your legs, then your
feet, and then you was dragged away from me, and I was knocked down flat
by 'bout hunderd ton o' sand coming on my head. I didn't weigh it, so
p'r'aps there warn't so much.

"I was made half stupid; but I heerd them cheering, and I knowed they'd
got you out, for they shouted down the hole for the next, and I had to
drag the rope I had out of the sand before I fastened it round Shock,
who give a bit of a groan as soon as I touched him, and I wished I'd
heerd you groan too.

"`Haul away,' I shouted, and I walked right up a heap of sand, as they
hauled at Shock, and as soon as they'd dragged him away from me, and he
was going up, I jumped back, expecting some more sand to fall, and so it
did, as they hauled, whole barrowfuls of it.

"Then come some more shouting, and Old Brownsmith's brother roared down
the hole:--

"`All right. Safe up.'

"`All right, is it?' I says, scratching the sand out o' my head, `and
how's me and the dog to come?'

"They seemed to have thought of that, for the ganger shouts down the
crooked hole--`How are we to get down the rope to you?'

"`I d'know,' I says; and I stood there in the dark thinking and
listening to the buzzing voices, and wondering what to do.

"`Wonder how nigh I am to the hole,' I says to myself; and I walked up
quite a heap o' sand and tried if I could touch anything, but I
couldn't.

"Then I thought of the dog.

"`Hi, Juno!' I says, and she whined and come to me, and I took hold of
her.

"`Here, you try if you can't get out, old gal,' I says; and I believe as
she understood me as I lifted her up and helped her scramble up, and
somehow I got her right with her stomach on my head. Then I lifted her
should