ed into the truck and began to glide back into the
tunnel they had just quitted. But not again in darkness and silence;
the entire band of Red Rovers accompanied them, illuminating the
dark passage with the candles they had snatched from the walls. In a
few moments they were at the entrance again. The great world lay
beyond them once more with rocks and valleys suffused by the rosy
light of the setting sun. The past seemed like a dream.

But were they really awake now? They could not tell. They accepted
everything with the confidence and credulity of all children who
have no experience to compare with their first impressions and to
whom the future contains nothing impossible. It was without
surprise, therefore, that they felt themselves lifted on the
shoulders of the men who were making quite a procession along the
steep trail towards the settlement again. Polly noticed that at the
mouth of the other tunnels they were greeted by men as if they were
carrying tidings of great joy; that they stopped to rejoice
together, and that in some mysterious manner their conductors had
got their faces washed, and had become more like beings of the outer
world. When they neared the settlement the excitement seemed to
have become greater; people rushed out to shake hands with the men
who were carrying them, and overpowered even the children with
questions they could not understand. Only one sentence Polly could
clearly remember as being the burden of all congratulations. "Struck
the old lead at last!" With a faint consciousness that she knew
something about it, she tried to assume a dignified attitude on the
leader's shoulders even while she was beginning to be heavy with
sleep.

[Illustration]

And then she remembered a crowd near her father's house, out of
which her father came smiling pleasantly on her, but not interfering
with her triumphal progress until the leader finally deposited her
in her mother's lap in their own sitting room. And then she
remembered being "cross" and declining to answer any questions, and
shortly afterwards found herself comfortably in bed. Then she heard
her mother say to her father:--

"It really seems too ridiculous for any thing, John, the idea of
these grown men dressing themselves up to play with children."

"Ridiculous or not," said her father, "these grown men of the
'Excelsior' mine have just struck the famous old lode of Red
Mountain, which is as good as a fortune to everybody on the Ridge,