ou don't drop your ashes into my tea-caddy, I don't
care where you throw them."

It was late in the afternoon of the second day when the telegram
arrived, a delay which caused no apparent suffering to any one except,
perhaps, Peter, who wandered about with a "Nothing from Jack yet, eh?"
A question which no one answered, it being addressed to nobody in
particular, unless it was to Ruth, who had started at every ring of the
door-bell. As to Miss Felicia--she had already dismissed the young man
from her mind.

When it did arrive there was a slight flutter of interest, but nothing
more; Miss Felicia laying down her book, Ruth asking in indifferent
tones--even before the despatch was opened--"Is he coming?" and Morris,
who was playing chess with Peter, holding his pawn in mid-air until the
interruption was over.

Not so Peter--who with a joyous "Didn't I tell you the boy would keep
his promise--" sprang from his chair, nearly upsetting the chess-board
in his eagerness to hear from Jack, an eagerness shared by Ruth, whose
voice again rang out, this time in an anxious tone,

"Hurry up, Uncle Peter--is he coming?"

Peter made no answer; he was staring straight at the open slip, his face
deathly pale, his hand trembling.

"I'll tell you all about it in a minute, dear," he said at last with a
forced smile. Then he touched Morris's arm and the two left the room.

CHAPTER XIV

The Scribe would willingly omit this chapter. Dying men, hurrying
doctors, improvised stretchers made of wrenched fence rails; silent,
slow-moving throngs following limp, bruised bodies,--are not pleasant
objects to write about and should be disposed of as quickly as possible.

Exactly whose fault it was nobody knew; if any one did, no one ever
told. Every precaution had been taken each charge had been properly
placed and tamped; all the fulminates inspected and the connections made
with the greatest care. As to the battery--that was known to be half a
mile away in the pay shanty, lying on Jack Breen's table.

Nor was the weather unfavorable. True, there had been rain the day
before, starting a general thaw, but none of the downpour had soaked
through the outer crust of the tunnel to the working force inside and
no extra labor had devolved on the pumps. This, of course, upset
all theories as to there having been a readjustment of surface rock,
dangerous sometimes, to magnetic connections.

Then again, no man understood tunnel construction