ue. He could only sulk now, breathing hard and grunting
when the pain was unbearable. One thought comforted him, and one only:
Far back in his bulk he knew of a thin place in his hide,--so thin,
owing to a dip in the contour of the hill,--that but a few yards of
overlying rock and earth lay between it and the free air.

Here his tormentors had stopped; why, he could not tell until he began
to keep tally of what had passed his mouth: The long trains of cars
had ceased; so had the snorting locomotives; so had the steam drills.
Curious-looking boxes and kegs were being passed in, none of which
ever came back; men with rolls of paper on which were zigzag markings
stumbled inside, stayed an hour and stumbled out again; these men wore
no lamps in their hats and were better dressed than the others. Then a
huge wooden drum wrapped with wire was left overnight outside his lips
and unrolled the next morning, every yard of it being stretched so far
down his throat that he lost all track of it.

On the following morning work of every kind ceased; not a man with a
lamp anywhere--and these The Beast hated most; that is, none that he
could see or feel. After an hour or more the head man arrived and with
two others went inside. The head man was tall and fair, had gray side
whiskers and wore a slouch hat; the second man was straight and well
built, with a boyish face tanned by the weather. The third man was short
and fat: this one carried a plan. Behind the three walked five other
men.

All were talking.

"The dip is to the eastward," the head man said. "The uplift ought to
clear things so we won't have to handle the stuff twice. Hard to rig
derricks on that slope. Let's have powder enough, anyhow, Bolton."

The fat man nodded and consulted his plan with the help of his
eye-glasses. Then the three men and the five men passed in out of
hearing.

The Beast was sure now. The men were going to blow out the side of the
hill where his hide was thinnest so as to make room for an air-shaft.

An hour later a gang in charge of a red-shirted foreman who were
shifting a section of toy track on the "fill" felt the earth shake under
them. Then came a dull roar followed by a cloud of yellow smoke mounting
skyward from an opening high up on the hillside. Flashing through this
cloud leaped tongues of flame intermingled with rocks and splintered
trees. From the tunnel's mouth streamed a thin, steel-colored gas that
licked its way along the upper