see it aren't broke?"

"Yes, of course. Why, it did not part, Sam!" cried Joe, excitedly.

"Nay; it did not part."

"Then it came untied," cried Joe, frantically. "Oh, Sam!"

CHAPTER FOUR.

JOE HEARS A CRY.

"Here, what's the good o' your shouting at me like that, my lad? Think
things aren't bad enough for me without that?" cried the man, in an
ill-used tone.

"You did not tie it properly."

"Yes, I did, lad, so don't go saying such a word as that. I made that
rope fast round him quite proper."

"No, or it wouldn't have come untied. And you boasted as you did! Why,
you've murdered him. Oh, Sam, Sam, Sam!"

"Will you be quiet?" cried the man, who was trembling visibly. "Don't
you turn again' me. You were in the business, too. You helped, my lad;
and if I murdered him, you were as bad as me."

"It's too cruel--too cruel!" groaned Joe.

"And you turning again' me like that!" cried Hardock. "You shouldn't
run back from your mate in a job, my lad," said the man, excitedly. "I
tied him up in the reg'lar, proper knot, and you calls me a murderer.
Just what his father would say to me if I give him a chance. It's a
shame!"

"We trusted you, both of us, because you were a man, and we thought you
knew what was right!"

"And so I did know what was right, and did what was right; that there
rope wouldn't have never come undone if he hadn't touched it. He must
have got fiddling it about and undone it hissen. It warn't no doing o'
mine!"

"Shame! Oh, you miserable coward!" cried Joe, starting to his feet now
in his indignant anger.

"Mizzable coward! Oh, come, I like that!" cried Hardock. "Who's a
coward?"

"Why, you are; and you feel your guilt. Look at you shivering, and
white as you are."

"Well, aren't it enough to make any man shiver and look white, knowing
as that poor lad's lying dead at the bottom of that big hole?"

Joe groaned, and took hold of the rope's end.

"How could he have undone the knot, swinging as he was in the air? You
know well enough it was not properly tied."

"But it was!" cried Hardock, indignantly. "I tied it carefully mysen,
just as I should have done if I'd been going down."

"Don't use that knot again, then," said Joe, bitterly. "I wish--oh! how
I wish you had let me go down instead."

"What?" cried the man. "Why, you'd ha' been drowned i'stead o' he."

"I wish I had been. It would have been better than having to go to the
Colonel to tell him--