the engineer answered, throwing over an arm, and
watching the cage ascend with a car of ore.

It trundled away, and Dick stepped into the cage. The man appeared
irresolute, and embarrassed.

"He'll be up pretty soon, I think," he ventured.

"Well, I'll not wait for him," Dick said. "Lower away."

The man still stood, irresolute.

"Let her go, I said," Dick called sharply, his usual patience of
temper having gone.

"But--but----" halted the engineer. "Bill said to me, when he went
down, says he: 'You don't let any one come below. Understand? I don't
care if it's Townsend himself. Nobody comes down. You hold the cage,
because I'll send the shift up, and 'tend to the firing myself.'"

For an instant Dick was enraged by this stubbornness, and turned with
a threat, and said: "Who's running this mine? I don't care what he
said. You haven't understood him. Lower away there, I say, and be
quick about it!"

The rails and engine room slid away from him. The cage slipped
downward on its oiled bearings, as if reluctant, and the light above
faded away to a small pin-point below, and then died in obscurity, as
if the world had been blotted out. Only the sense of falling told him
that he was going down, down, to the seven-hundred-foot level, and
then he remembered that he had no candle. The cage came to a halt, and
he fumbled for the guard bar, lifted it, and stepped out.

Straight ahead of him he saw a dim glow of light. With one hand on
the wall he started toward it, approached it, and then, in the
hollow of illumination saw something that struck him like a blow in
the face. The hard, resounding clash of his heels on the rock
underfoot stopped. His hands fell to his sides, as if fixed in an
attitude of astonishment. Standing in the light beyond him stood
Joan, with her hands raised, palms outward.

"Stop!" she commanded. "Stop! Stay where you are a moment!"

Amazed and bewildered, he obeyed mechanically, and comprehended rather
than saw that, crouched on the floor of the drift beyond, his partner
knelt with a watch in his hand, and in a listening attitude. Suddenly,
as if all had been waiting for this moment, a dull tremor ran through
the depths of the Croix d'Or. A muffled, beating, rending sound seemed
to tear its way, vibrant, through the solid ledge. He leaped forward,
understanding all at once, as if in a flash of illumination, what the
woman he loved and his partner had been waiting for. It was the sound
of the