Some twenty feet lower Will shouted to his companion to halt, for there was a broad band of glittering-yellow metallic stone crossing the shaft-wall diagonally. The lad's heart beat wildly for a few moments, but he calmed down as he felt that had this been of any value the old adventurers would not have passed it by. "Only mundic," he said, as he inspected it more closely. "Lower away, Josh!" and the band of sulphuret of iron was left behind. Lower and lower, with the top of the shaft looking a comparatively small square hole, and as the lad glanced up at it for a moment the first symptom of fear that he had felt attacked him. For as he saw how frail was the cord by which he hung, and realised that he was depending entirely upon his companion's strength of arm, his brain swam, his eyes closed, and he clung tightly with both hands to the rope. The attack passed off directly. "Josh thinks I'm a coward," he muttered, "and I suppose I am; but I won't show it;" and shouting a cheery order to the fisherman to lower away, the lad descended farther and farther, with the right of his candle flashing now from the walls, which were wet and shining with the oozings of the surrounding rock. This moisture had gone on coating the walls in patches for many a long year, so that in these places it was impossible without scraping for the keenest of eyes to detect even the composition of the stones, and with a sigh of dissatisfaction the searcher shouted to Josh to lower away. "Here, you've gone down far enough," cried Josh. "I'm going to haul you up now." "No, no!" shouted Will, the excitement of being in antagonism with his helpmate driving away the last particle of nervousness. "Lower away!" Josh hesitated for a moment, and made a movement as if to rub his nose, but his hands were engaged, and he got over the difficulty by bending down his head and applying the itching organ to the rope, after which he shook his head fiercely, but went on lowering. "He's getting too much for me a gashly sight, this boy," he growled. There was ample line to lower Will right down to the surface of the water, though he was unaware of the fact, as he swung gently to and fro, eagerly scanning every clear space of the rock through which the shaft had been cut; and where the wall was dry, in spite of the time that had elapsed since the work was done the marks of the miners' picks and hammers were as clear as if the blows had fallen only a few months before. As the lad looked, too, he could, in his own disappointment, realise how great must have been that of the adventurers whose capital was being expended day after day cutting on and finding nothing but grey, hard granite, with here and there bands of ruddy stone suggestive of the presence of tin, but in such minute quantities that it would not pay for the labour of lifting out and crushing the stone.