A moment later Gregory and Ora were alone in the tunnel. XI “How did you guess?” asked Ora. “I didn’t guess. I saw a drill hole just beyond where my men were working. I also did a little quick deduction. Miners blast just before they go off shift. The afternoon change of shift is at three o’clock. As I told you I had seen the Apex men come up about one o’clock when their compressor stopped. That hole not only told me that they were closer than we had thought, but that they were up to devilment. I guessed that they had timed to blast just before we were ready to drill at that point. Were you very much frightened?” “I didn’t like it.” Ora knew that bravery in woman makes no appeal to the lordly male. “But I hardly had time to think; and after all you left me nothing to do.” “Well, you were game and didn’t scream or cry,” he conceded handsomely. “Let’s light up.” They had walked as far as the station at the foot of the shaft. Gregory unlocked the door of a small cupboard, found two candles and inserted them in miners’ candlesticks that were stabbed into the walls. They flickered in the draft as a skip rattled up from the second level, but relieved the oppressive darkness. “Why, your hair is down!” exclaimed Gregory. Ora put up a hand. “So it is! Well--I am sure I never should know if my hair fell down at a good play, and ours was live drama. I’ll braid it and put on my veil up above.” He watched her for a moment as she sat on a box braiding her long fair hair, vaguely recalling the legend of the Lorelei. He noticed that her eyes as she peered up at him looked green in that uncertain light. But in a moment his thoughts wandered from her. He folded his arms and stared downward. Ora leaned back against the wall. She saw that he had forgotten her, but had made up her mind to accept him as he was; she had no more desire to dictate his moods than to read in advance the book of the next two months. There was the same pleasurably painful vibration in her nerves as on the night when she had piled stake upon stake at Monte Carlo. From that scene her thoughts travelled naturally to Valdobia and she suddenly laughed aloud. “What are you laughing at?” demanded Gregory suspiciously. “I was trying to imagine that we were imprisoned in the underground dungeon of an Italian palace in the middle ages.” “Hard work, I should think. Although if we had a cave-in I guess the results would be about the same.” “And you? Were you seeing your minerals winking three thousand feet below?” He laughed then, and sat beside her. “At all events the mystery down there is more romantic than your mediæval dungeons--and so will the great underground caverns be when the ores have been taken out.” “Pity the caverns--stopes!--have to be filled up with débris to prevent the mine caving in,” said Ora flippantly. “I went underground in Butte last week--to the eighteenth level of the Leonard. Nothing but endless streets and cross-alleys, all numbered----”