way
though the swirling, frigid fleece to Kentucky Gulch and upward. At
last they passed the guard, huddled just within the tunnel, and
clambered down the ladder which had been put in place by the
sight-seers on the day of the strike. Then--

Well, then Harry ran, to do much as Fairchild had done, to chuckle and
laugh and toss the heavy bits of ore about, to stare at them in the
light of his carbide torch, and finally to hurry into the new stope
which had been fashioned by the hired miners in Fairchild's employ and
stare upward at the heavy vein of riches above him.

"Wouldn't it knock your eyes out?" he exclaimed, beaming. "That vein
's certainly five feet wide."

"And two hundred dollars to the ton," added Fairchild, laughing. "No
wonder Rodaine wanted it."

"I 'll sye so!" exclaimed Harry, again to stand and stare, his mouth
open, his mustache spraying about on his upper lip in more directions
than ever. A long time of congratulatory celebration, then Harry led
the way to the far end of the great cavern. "'Ere it is!" he
announced, as he pointed to what had seemed to both of them never to be
anything more than a fissure in the rocks. "It's the thing that saved
my life."

Fairchild stared into the darkness of the hole in the earth, a narrow
crack in the rocks barely large enough to allow a human form to squeeze
within. He laughed.

"You must have made yourself pretty small, Harry."

"What? When I went through there? Sye, I could 'ave gone through the
eye of a needle. There were six charges of dynamite just about to go
off be'ind me!"

Again the men chuckled as they looked at the fissure, a natural, usual
thing in a mine, and often leading, as this one did, by subterranean
breaks and slips to the underground bed of some tumbling spring.
Suddenly, however, Fairchild whirled with a thought.

"Harry! I wonder--couldn't it have been possible for my father to have
escaped from this mine in the same way?"

"'E must 'ave."

"And that there might not have been any killing connected with Larsen
at all? Why couldn't Larsen have been knocked out by a flying
stone--just like you were? And why--?"

"'E might of, Boy." But Harry's voice was negative. "The only thing
about it was the fact that your father 'ad a bullet 'ole in 'is 'ead."
Harry leaned forward and pointed to his own scar. "It 'it right about
'ere, and glanced. It did n't 'urt 'im much, and I bandaged it and
then covered it with 'is 'a