Collins apologized calmly. "We were asses, of course; but we
couldn't tell we'd made a mistake. We didn't have as much fun as a bag
of monkeys while we were making it, either, especially when there was
that--trouble--in the assay office. We came in on the tail-end of that,
only we'd no guns, and it was too late to help our poor chaps, anyway.
Besides, we thought you----" but he checked abruptly. "It's too long to
explain in this freezing hole. Let's get out! You're not corked up here
so dead tight as Hutton-Macartney thinks," and in the dark I knew he
grinned. "Only I imagine we'd better decide what we're going to do
before he discovers that!"

"Do? I've got to get Paulette!" But I lurched as I turned back to the
blocked tunnel entrance, and Collins caught me by the shoulder.

"You can't get her," said he succinctly, "unless we help you! Going to
trust us?"

It didn't seem to me that I had any choice; so I said yes. Then I gaped
like a fool. Dunn and Collins had me by the arms and were marching me
through the dark, not toward the tunnel where I'd been slung in, but
back through Thompson's black, abandoned stope, as if it had been
Broadway, till the side wall of it brought us up. "Over you go," said
Collins gruffly. He gave me a boost against the smooth wall of the
stope, and my clawing fingers caught on the edge of a sharp shelf of
stone. I swung myself up on it, mechanically, and felt my feet go
through the solid stope wall, into space. There was an opening in the
living rock, and as Collins lit another match where he stood below me, I
saw it: a practicable manhole, slanting down behind my shelf so sharply
that it must have been invisible from Thompson's stope, even in
candlelight. Collins and Dunn swarmed up beside me, and the next second
we all three slid through the black slit behind our ledge, and
out--somewhere else. Collins lit a candle-end, and I saw we were in a
second tunnel, a remarkably amateur, unsafe tunnel, too, if I'd been
worrying about trifles, but not Thompson's!

The thing made me start, and Collins grinned. "More convenient exit than
old Thompson's, only we don't live here! If you'll come on you'll see."
He and his candle disappeared round a loose looking boulder into a dark
hole in the tunnel side, and his voice continued blandly as I stumbled
after. "Natural cave, this tunnel was, when we found it; this second
cave leading out of it; and a passage from here to--outside!" He waved
his hand aro