had to be thawed out by means
of wood fires. We built a fire at the far end of the drift every night,
covering the face we were working. First we would lay kindling, then
dry spruce lying lengthways, then a bank of green wood standing on end
to keep in the heat and shed the dirt that sloughed down from the roof.
In the morning our fire would be burned out, and enough pay-dirt thawed
to keep us picking all day.

Down there I found it the hardest work of all. We had to be careful that
the smoke had cleared from the drift before we ventured in, for
frequently miners were asphyxiated. Indeed, the bad air never went
entirely away. It made my eyes sore, my head ache. Yet, curiously
enough, so long as you were below it did not affect you so much. It was
when you stepped out of the bucket and struck the pure outer air that
you reeled and became dizzy. It was blinding, too. Often at supper have
my eyes been so blurred and sore I had to grope around uncertainly for
the sugar bowl and the tin of cream.

In the drift it was always cool. The dirt kept sloughing down on us, and
we had really gone in too far for our own safety, but the laymen cared
little for that. At the end of the drift the roof was so low we were
bent almost double, picking at the face in all kinds of cramped
positions, and dragging after us the heavy bucket. To the big Slav it
was all in the day's work, but to me it was hard, hard.

The shaft was almost forty feet deep. For the first ten feet a ladder
ran down it, then stopped suddenly as if the excavators had decided to
abandon it. I often looked at this useless bit of ladder and wondered
why it had been left unfinished.

Every morning the Worm hoisted us down into the darkness, and at night
drew us up. Once he said to me:

"Say, wouldn't it be de tough luck if I was to take a fit when I was
hoistin' youse up? Such a nice bit of a boy, too, an' I guess I'd lose
my job over de head of it."

I said: "Cut that out, or you'll have me so scared I won't go down."

He grinned unpleasantly and said nothing more. Yet somehow he was
getting on my nerves terribly.

It was one evening we had banked our fires and were ready to be hoisted
up. Dooley Rileyvich went first, and I watched him blot out the bit of
blue for a while. Then, slowly, down came the bucket for me.

I got in. I was feeling uneasy all of a sudden, and devoutly wished I
were anywhere else but in that hideous hole. I felt myself leave the
ground an