few moments a light appeared below him, a feeble flame, far down in the
rock. This was waved twice and then withdrawn.

'Righto!' said Jacker in a hoarse piratical tone. 'Gimme the tucker,
Black Douglas; I'll go down. You coves keep watch, an' no talkin', mind.'

Phil grumbled inarticulately, and Jacker's tone became hoarser and more
piratical still.

'Who's commandin' here?' he growled. 'D'ye mean mutiny?

'Oh, shut up!' said Doon, bitterly. 'No one's goin' t' mutiny, but there
ain't no fun campin' here.'

McKnight relented.

'All right,' he said, 'come down if you wanter. S'pose you'll on'y be
makin' some kind of a row 'f I leave you.'

Jacker put the growth aside carefully, and going feet first gradually
disappeared. Within there in the formless darkness he stood upon a ladder
made of the long stem of a sapling to which cleats were nailed. The
sapling was suspended in a black abyss. The boy, with his bundle hanging
from his shoulder, started down fearlessly. Presently he came to where a
second prop was fastened to the first with spikes and strong rope. Here
he paused a moment, and called:

'Hello, be-e-low there!'

Jacker's character had undergone a rapid change; he was now quite an
innocent and law-abiding person, a working shareholder in the Mount of
Gold Quartz-mining Company.

'On top!' answered a cautious voice from the depths.

'Look up--man on!

And now, having observed the formalities, Jacker continued his descent,
and in a few moments dropped from the primitive ladder and found a
footing on a few planks thrown from one drive to another, across what was
really an old shaft. At his back was a drive running into darkness;
before him was a small irregular excavation lit with a single candle, and
sitting in this, dressed, or, more correctly, undressed, like miners at
their work, were Dick Haddon and Ted McKnight.

Jacker threw his bundle on the floor of the drive.

'Crib,' he said carelessly; and then, after examining the face of the
excavation: 'S'pose we ain't likely to cut the lode this shift, Dick?

Dick shook his head thoughtfully.

'No,' he said. 'Allowin' for the underlay, we should strike her about
fifteen feet in.'

The other boys had now joined their mates. Each on his way down had
gravely followed the example of Jacker, who was supposed to be the boss
of the incoming shift. As the fathers labour their sons play, and for
months these boys had been digging in this old mine, off and o