broke the profound
darkness. More than once each fell over the litter of timbers, but only
to rise and struggle on again, until finally Brace halted.

"It's no use," he said with a moan. "Each step now is carrying us lower.
I remember hearing some of the old hands say the abandoned drifts were a
hundred feet or so farther down the hill. We must be considerably below
the deepest shaft."

"Have you given up all hope?" Fred asked in a whisper, for while
surrounded by the dense blackness the full tones of his voice sounded
fearsome.

"Ay, lad, all hope."

"Try once more. There surely is a way out if we could only strike it!"

"We may as well meet the water here. I've been in the mines long enough
to know that this runnin' at random is worse than standin' quiet. When a
man's time has come there's no use to fight."

Fred could not urge him farther. The numbness of fear was upon him,
brought by this sudden surrender of the man whom he had believed would
be able to extricate them from the precarious position, and now he
thought only of his mother.

How long the two remained there silent and motionless neither ever knew.
To Fred it seemed as if hours passed before Brace seized him by the arm
as he cried at the full strength of his lungs:

"Hello! Mate! This way!"

Then he ran forward at full speed, dragging Fred with him, and shouting
like an insane man all the while until finally the boy could see a tiny
spark of light far in the distance.

"It's some one looking for us," Fred cried.

"Whether he's come for us, or is on business of his own, matters little
since his light is burning."

Then, as Brace ceased speaking, Fred heard a familiar voice shouting,
and an instant later Sam Thorpe had grasped him by the hand.

"Why, it's Bill's butty! What are you doing here?"

"I came to look for the new breaker boy; I thought Skip's crowd had done
him some mischief."

"So they did, an' another set of scoundrels would have drowned us all
out but for your coming."

"What do you mean?"

"There's no time for talkin' now. How did you get here?"

"By an old slope that I stumbled across the other day. I found Fred's
bundles near the shaft, and believed he had been let down there."

"Go on the best you know how; I'll give you a bit of an idea about
ourselves while we're walking."

The gleam of the lamp Sam wore in his cap was sufficient to show the
way, and by the time the entrance to the slope had been reached the
butt