e known Collins's face as he asked
what I meant about wolf dope now and when I thought I was swearing at
Macartney in Thompson's stope.

I told him, with my ears straining for Charliet and a girl creeping to
us, through Collins's back way out. But all I heard was silence,--that
thick, underground silence that fills the ears like wool. I had said I
would wait ten minutes, and nine of them were gone. I don't think I
spoke. Dunn muttered suddenly, "They're not coming!"

Collins shook his head and coldly cursed himself and me for two fools
who had lain low, when out in the open together we could have stopped
Macartney from getting Dudley, if we couldn't have helped old Thompson.
He never mentioned Paulette, or his trusted cook. But he rose, lit a
second candle, and led the way out of his warm burrow by a dark hole
opposite the one we had entered by, and into a cramped alley where we
had to walk bent double. It felt as if it ran a mile before it turned in
a sharp right angle. Collins pinched out his light and turned on me.
"Just what--are you going to do?"

"Get Paulette," said I.

"M-m," said Collins. "Well, here's where we start. Get hold of my heels
when I lie down and don't crowd me." And that was every word that came
out of either of us as we dropped flat, and wormed head-first down a
slope of smooth stone till cold, fresh air abruptly smote my face. In
front of us was an opening, out of the bowels of the hill, into the
night and the snow. Rooted juniper hung down over it in an impervious
curtain, as it hung everywhere from the rocks at La Chance. Collins
pushed it aside, and the two of us were out--out of Thompson's stope,
where Macartney had meant me to lie till I died!

CHAPTER XVI

IN COLLINS'S CARE

For two breaths I did not know where I was. It was still snowing, and
the night was wild, such a night as we might not have again for weeks.
Any one could move in it as securely as behind a curtain, for I could
not see a yard before my face, and not a track could lie five minutes.
But suddenly the familiarity of the place hit me, till I could have
laughed out, if I had been there on any other business. Collins's long
passage had wormed behind Thompson's stope, behind the La Chance
stables; and it was no wonder he had found it easy enough to get
supplies from Charliet. All he had to do was to cross the clearing from
the jutting rock that shielded his private entrance and walk into
Charliet's kitchen door