Philip, with his father's help, devised two or three alterations in the ventilation of the mine, which also made it less fiery, as the pitmen called it; but his great project was to have another shaft. "You see, father," he said, "we burrow into the ground like animals, but we do not take their precautions. A fox or a rabbit always has a second hole by which he can escape if there is anything wrong with the first. Ours is without doubt a dangerous pit, and if anything happened to block the shaft, the poor fellows down below would be entombed." "Yes, my boy," said Mr Hexton grimly; "but it doesn't cost the rabbits or the foxes ten thousand pounds to make their second hole. It would cost us that. We must be content with one." That question of a second shaft was always cropping up in Philip Hexton's brain, for, said he to himself, it is a sin against four hundred men to let them go down that place without providing them with proper means of escape. But upon going into calculations he found that the cost of a second shaft would approach the ten thousand pounds before all was ready, and he knew that the proprietors would not listen to such a proposition. What, then, was to be done? The answer came to him one evening like a flash of thought; and, starting off, he made his way through the scrubby patch of woodland on the hill-slope joining the colliery lands to the next property. It took him some time to find that of which he was in search, for the neglected ground was overgrown with tangled brambles, hazels, and pollards; and a stranger would have at once looked upon the wilderness of a place as unturned ground. But Philip knew better. He was growing weary of his search, however, when he made his discovery in a fashion that he did not anticipate, for, just as he was forcing his way through a tangled part of the wood, and parting the shady hazel stubbs that arrested his progress, his feet seemed to drop suddenly from beneath him, and he went down into semi-darkness, to hang clinging with the energy of despair to the hazel boughs; while, had he had any doubt about his position as he swung gently to and fro, he was taught by the horrible echoing plash that came up from hundreds of feet below, as the mass of crumbling earth and roots, upon which he had stepped, fell into the water.