er
face seemed to turn him with the intensity of the suffering in her eyes.
He realized that he had not noticed her before, and now with a wild
throb of pity he stretched out his hands towards her, a look of
suffering in his eyes, as if he were feeling the pains of humanity
crucified anew, and the chair began to drop slowly below the surface,
swinging down into the darkness and the evil dangers that lurked below.
Her face was the last thing he saw--a face full of agony yet calm with a
great renunciation coming to birth in her eyes, her lips drawn thin like
a slit in her face and all the color gone from them, the head bent a
little as if a great blow had fallen upon her--an island of agony set in
a sea of despair.

A wild impulse seized him to go back. It was too much to ask of a woman,
he felt. Too great a burden of tragedy to heap upon one soul, as he cast
his mind back through the suffering years and viewed all the pain she
had borne, and the terrible Gethsemane which her life had been; but as
the chair swung round he clutched the swaying rope and with the other
hand steadied it from crashing against the side of the shaft as they
slowly dropped lower and lower into the darkness and the evil smells
which hung around.

"Things look bad here," said his comrade as they passed down where at
some time a huge portion from the side had fallen out and down into the
bottom of the old shaft.

"Ay," answered Robert, "everything seems just ready to collapse," and
they dropped lower and lower, swaying from side to side, cautiously
guiding their swinging chair from the moss-oozing side, their nerves
strained as they listened to the creeking rope as it was paid out from
above.

"Holy God," cried his mate, "that was a near thing," as a huge mass of
rocks and slimy moss lunged out a little below them and hurtled away in
a loud rumbling noise.

Robert pulled the signal cord to stop and looked up to see the white
clouds passing over the narrow funnel-like shaft in which they hung.
Then he gave the signal to let out again noting how thick with damp the
atmosphere was becoming, and having difficulty with his light.

Lower and lower they swung and dropped down into the old shaft and as
the rope creaked and crazed above them it lilted:

"Choose, choose, wha' you'll tak',
Wha' you'll tak', wha' you'll tak',
Choose, choose wha' you'll tak',
A laddie or a lassie."

And the memory of the old lilt brought back other scenes aga