He could not easily judge how far the feeble glimmer led them, so rugged and winding was the way. Once, as the mouth of a submerged shaft yawned suddenly before his unprescient feet, he hesitated, half deterred; he was fain to skulk with the skulking shadows, lest the light should reveal his presence, and thus the dangers which his precursors braved menaced him doubly. He marveled that they dared the possibilities of the place, as he noted that the half-fallen timbers in a cross-cut through which they passed barely supported the masses of earth which any jar might dislodge. Everywhere was the sound of water working its secret will still on the ruins that it had made, and its tone added to the awe of the place, and the desolation, and the darkness, and the eerie effect of the bats that flew after the lantern and smote blindly against it. The light was set down presently, and as the men seemed stirring about their work Larrabee ventured to approach nearer behind a pile of broken rock in the darkness, and mopped the cold perspiration from his brow. He caught his breath at the sight of the faces which the lantern revealed. For they were all recruited from his mother's hearth. Some crazy folly, doubtless, of old man Haight had drawn him here. He had been one of the miners before that catastrophe which had closed the work forever; Larrabee remembered in what deep, blood-curdling tones he was wont to curse the Lost Time mine. And his daughter Jerusha's husband,--it had always been a marvel where and how he obtained the whiskey he so indubitably consumed; perhaps, in consideration of his age and infirmities, Mrs. Larrabee furnished a too ample allowance of liquor to old man Haight, who, for services rendered in this wild enterprise, furnished his son-in-law. "We-uns hev been toler'ble good customers o' the Lost Time still," Larrabee muttered sarcastically. And there was Jack Espey! The sanity of _his_ presence here was easily demonstrable; nowhere else could he so safely be. How he had chanced to coöperate in this strange work with the dotard and the sot was soon explained. "Gimme a holt o' that thar grub," he said gruffly, with a look of poignant hunger on his thin face. Old Haight, with a deprecatory expression and shaking hand, made haste to give him a small basket, of the queer shape and aspect which bespoke the work of the Indians of Quallatown. The young man voraciously thrust his hand into its narrow mouth, and as he drew forth its meagre contents gave vent to his disappointment. "My Lord!" he exclaimed, "is that all? An' ye expec' me ter kem hyar night arter night--from--from"--the effort of his heavy flight of imagination showed in his face--"from 'way over yander whar I live now, an' holp ye dig an' sech, an' gin me sech forage ter work on ez that!" He pointed contemptuously at the food, albeit his mouth was full.