"

If I had had any ideas of a silver mine being a cavern full of beautiful
sights, I was very soon deceived, for as I stood there at the top, I saw
my father step on to the top rounds of a rough-looking ladder, and begin
to descend slowly till he reached a platform, when he called to me to
follow.

"Hold tight," he said. "But there, I needn't tell you after your cliff
climbing."

I was just about to descend when a voice behind me made me turn.

"Going down, Sep?"

I turned to confront Bigley Uggleston, who looked at me imploringly.

"Ask him if I may come down too?"

"Who's that?" said my father sharply. "Oh, I see. Yes, he can come."

Bigley flushed up with pleasure, and I let him go down next, and then
followed, to find that a gallery went off on a level with the platform;
but my father had already descended to the next platform below, and when
we followed him there, it was to find he had reached another.

To get to this we passed another gallery, and then stood by where my
father was lighting a couple of candles, as he rested upon some
wood-work, beneath which we could hear the trickle and splash of falling
water, while away from our right, down a long passage propped here and
there with pieces of timber, came the dull echoing sound of blows.

"Well, my lads, what do you think of the enchanted cave?"

I looked about me by the light of the dim candles and saw that the shaft
was divided by a wood partition, one side being reserved for the
ladders, the other for the pump to work and the stout rope to go up and
down and draw the buckets, there being openings in the wood-work
opposite each of the galleries.

"Well, you don't say anything," said my father.

"It's very dark, sir," replied Bigley.

"Yes," said my father; "and it's darker still farther in. What do you
say, will you go on?"

"If Sep does."

"Oh, yes," I said, "I shall go;" not that I wanted to go any farther,
but I felt that I could not draw back; though I would very gladly have
been up in the bright sunshine instead of in the damp gloomy hole, shut
in by ladders and wood-work, and with, the falling water seeming as if
it was gathering force, and ready to rise as it does in a well.

But there was no time for thinking. My father was leading the way along
the large square-shaped gallery, the candles casting curious shadows
which glided along the walls, as if our company had been joined by some
of the spirits of the mine.

As we went