Some months elapsed before the miners arrived at any satisfactory indications of precious ores; but, confident in ultimate success, our friends had got the clerk to write for them to Polly to say “all’s well,” and that she must not fail to come, as they were now housed and ready to make her and the little ones comfortable in that strange country. At the time of the expected arrival of the ship which was to bear her, the completion of the great shaft Was close at hand; the appearance of the veins of ore were such as to create the most sanguine expectations, and a day was fixed for finishing off the shaft previous to commencing to raise the precious object of their labours. They worked till late on the evening of the appointed day in boring and tamping for a large blast Which was to clear away the last ledge of rock lying between them and the vein of metal. When the charge was completed, William Wakeham and John Short were left below to fire it. The other workmen were raised upon a stage by the windlass in the usual manner; and with most culpable carelessness hastened off to the spirit shop which had already cursed the little settlement with its presence, to make merry for having arrived at this stage of their labours, leaving only a weakly boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age at the windlass. There was some delay in fixing the match: and ere all was ready, the short twilight of those sultry regions had darkened into night, and William’s old friends, the stars, looked down on him again through the deep well, as they had often done of yore. Then he and John talked of the old times and the old country, and of Polly’s coming soon, and how the little ones would have grown, and how, in a few years, they would all go back home again over that terrible sea, and lay their bones to rest at last under the Cornish soil. They had no business to linger so long over their work; but once they began to talk over such things as these, it was hard to stop them. “Now we have done with this weary blast,” said Wakeham, as he lighted the fuse, and stepped, with his brother, on to the stage. He then sounded the whistle, the signal for working the windlass to raise them. They rose very slowly--unpleasantly so, indeed, for the fuse would burn but for five minutes. “Hurry on, wind faster,” shouted William. Instead of that the stage stopped altogether, and a feeble childish voice from the top of the deep pit cried, “You are too heavy, I can only raise one at a time.” “Get help quickly or we’ll be blown up,” shouted William, now seeing the imminent peril. For some twenty feet below in the dark hole he saw the match burning rapidly down, fizzing and flashing as if running a race with them for life. “Get help,” again he shouted. But the feeble voice, now in a terrified tone, told them that all were gone away but that one weak boy. “But I think I can raise one.” There was but a moment to spare--perhaps not even that.