from the shaft.

"I don't know much about mines," whispered Elmer as the boys stopped and
listened to the clatter of the rocks as they settled down on the floor
of the cavern, "but that sounds to me a whole lot like a fall from the
roof. I hope the boys are not injured."

The boys walked faster until they came to the cross-passage and then
turned to the right. Just as they left the main gangway, they heard the
sound of running feet and directly the distant creaking of the ladder
rungs.

"Some one's making a hot-foot for the surface!" exclaimed Tommy.

"That's Ventner!" declared Sandy.

"How do you know that?"

"Because he wears heavy boots. We have rubbers on, and Jimmie and Dick,
who are down in the mine, are also wearing rubber boots!"

"The farther he gets away from the mine, the better it will suit me,"
Elmer broke in. "I wish he'd go away and stay for a hundred years!"

"The chances are that he dug away one of the pillars and caused that
drop from the roof," suggested Sandy.

"I guess that's all right, too," Elmer argued. "If he's been digging
around here the way the boys say he has, he's certainly taking chances
on cutting down more than one column. He ought to be fired out of the
mine!"

The boys now came to a chamber across the entrance to which a great mass
of shale had been thrown when the fall from the roof took place.

At first they listened, fearful that they would hear the voices of the
lads they were in search of beyond the wall, possibly crushed under the
weight of the mass of stone. Then they passed along for a short distance
and peered into the chamber over the heap of refuse.

What they saw brought excited exclamations to their lips.

Jimmie and Dick stood in the interior of the chamber, hedged in by
fallen debris. They were swinging their searchlights frantically from
side to side, and while the boys looked, they began, the utterance of
such yells as had never before been heard in that gloomy place.

"What's the trouble?" asked Elmer, showing his light at the narrow
opening between the roof of the chamber and the pile of refuse.

"Oh, you're there, are you?" asked one of the boys. "We thought perhaps
you'd gone back to New York and left us to starve to death."

"Well, you didn't starve, did you?" asked Elmer.

"Wow, wow, wow!" yelled Jimmie.

"Now, what is it?" asked Elmer.

"Rats!" yelled the boy. "Millions of rats! They're creeping out by the
regiment from behind the cribbing