xty feet across. Above their knot, to Revel's left,
was the open mouth of a mine; the opposite hillside was bare and rocky,
without break. A familiar voice behind him said, "What's to do, Mink?"

"Greetings, Jerran. Why did you leave the machine?"

"Nothing doing there. The gods are sitting on the horizon. Have you a
thought?"

"See that mine?" He pointed with his gory pick. "Isn't that the western
entrance of the great mine of Rosk?"

Jerran took his bearings. "It is."

"Then the other entrance is back yonder, and through it we can traverse
the mine and come out that hole-above the squires."

Jerran nodded. "The best plan under the circumstances. Let's go."

Rack said, "I come too."

"Yes, all of us save four men," agreed Revel. "They must stay here to
create noise and pretend to be forty people. Give us ten minutes, and
the squires will find that mine shaft erupting death all over them!"

CHAPTER XV

The Mink has fought till nearly blind,
Till almost deaf and dumb;
Till all his strength is waned away,
And all his senses numb.

At last his foemen give before
His pick as swift as fire;
Before him now there stands alone
The cruel, and savage squire!

--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink

With thirty men at his back, Revel went down the valley at a crouch;
slipped up the rock shelf to the eastern entrance of the great mine of
Rosk, protected from the gentry's view by a chance outcropping of shale,
and went into the darkness. The tunnel he sought was on the second
level. He dropped down the ladder, unhooked a blue lantern to guide his
way, and followed the narrow tunnel west.

Behind him the pad-pad of his weary men lifted muffled echoes, and he
tried to set such a pace as would take them swiftly to the hill above
the squires, yet not tire them further nor wind them before the battle.
In the intense gloom he distinguished another lantern far ahead. As he
approached, it appeared to move toward him. Was someone carrying it?

He tensed himself and swung the pick a little; but when the priest
hurled himself at the Mink, bearing him back against Jerran, the Mink
was caught by surprise. It had been no lantern, but the priest's glowing
robe!

Revel's reflexes were still, if not hair-trigger, at least very quick.
This was a tough priest, though, a lean hardbitten man, with a fanatical
long face that shoved itself into Revel's and clicked its teeth a
quarter-inch sho