, and his mates followed, not
too eagerly, Ted bringing up the rear. The drive was about eighty feet in
extent. Having reached the end, Dick held the candle low, and made
visible to his wondering mates a black cavity about eighteen inches in
diameter in one corner near the floor.

'We were workin' in here a bit for a change this afternoon after Peetree
hunted us, an' I broke through.'

'What's in there?' asked Jacker in an awed voice.

'Look,' said Dick.

Jacker backed away; the other three kept a respectful distance and stared
silently.

'It's on'y another drive,' Dick explained. 'It must come from the Red
Hand, I think.'

Dick was quite undisturbed, but the others were afraid, and even when
they had returned to their own drive cast many doubting glances back into
the darkness. In the mine as they had known it before everything was
definite, and there was nothing of which a boy of spirit need be afraid.
The shaft was choked with dirt a few feet below their landing-planks, and
there was no spot in which a mystery might lurk; but it was very
different now with that black hole leading Heaven knew into what awesome
depths, harbouring goodness knew what horrors. Ted's defection had
suddenly become the sentiment of the majority. At that moment Dick could
have counted on Peterson alone had need arisen.

'We'll go down there an' explore them workin's,' said Dick, having lit a
piece of dry root and composed himself for a smoke.

'In the daytime, Morgan,' said Jacker hastily and with diffidence.

'All right; but it don't make no difference down here, you know.'

Jacker thought it did, for although it was always night in the drives,
the consciousness that the earth above was flooded with sunlight was a
great heartener.

'Don't you think you'd best give this up for once--this bushranger game?'
ventured Jacker.

'Why?' Dick's eyes were round with surprise.

'Oh, well, Twitter's jack of it, an' I don't think it's much fun.' Jacker
had assumed a careless air. 'See here, Dick,' he continued smartly, 'the
Cow Flat chaps made a raid last night, an' took Butts an' three
others--mine among 'em.'

This was an important matter. Butts was Dick's big grey billygoat, the
best goat in harness the boys had ever known or ever heard of; and the
'Cow Flat chaps' were the boys of a small centre about two miles and a
half further down the creek, between whom and the boys of Waddy there
existed an interminable feud that led them to f