He sat long, looking down, his hands clasped about his knees, drinking with old Tantalus. But the reverie ended as it always did--in action. There was nothing for it but the claim. Success there meant success everywhere. It was the knowledge that Anne, the boy, and all he wished to do for both depended on the pay-streak which had urged him to such a fury of effort. His carelessness of his own life, that led him to slap his timbering up any way, was born of that same fury. And the consequences came like most consequences, without a moment's warning. It was a still and beautiful noon. Ches had pulled out the last car before dinner, and started for the cabin. A curious groaning and snapping from the tunnel halted him. It was the giving of the tortured timbers. On the heels of that came a dull, crushing roar. A blast of dust shot from the tunnel-mouth, like smoke from a cannon, preceded by a shock that nearly threw the boy off his feet. Then all was still again. The sun shone as brilliantly as before, blazing down upon the ghastly face of a little boy, who, after one heart-broken cry of "Jim! Oh, Jim's killed!" sank down upon the ground, chewing the fingers thrust in his mouth, that the pain might make the black wave keep its distance. For Ches knew that he was alone; that there was no human being within miles to help the man caught in the hand of that mischance but himself, so frantically willing, but so impotent. "I must git me wits tergedder--I must!" and down came the teeth with all the strength of the boy's jaw. "Oh, what will I do? What will I do?" The little head waved from side to side in its agony, and a sudden sob struck him in the throat. After that one small weakness rose Ches Felton, hero. To the mouth of the tunnel he went. Above the tumbled pile of dirt and timber ran a sort of passage, between it and the roof. A way along which a boy might crawl and find out if all the frames were down--to which the silence of the tunnel gave a bitter assent--or if by some most lucky chance one or two had held, and Jim be safe within. Ches climbed to the top and thrust his head into the gloom. "Jim!" he called, "Jim!" No answer. Before him lay the ruin of his pardner's work. It was over this that his path lay, as deadly dangerous a path as could be found. The slightest disturbing of the roof above might bring down a thousand tons of dirt upon the one who ventured, slowly and hideously to crush his life out, there in the dark, beyond sight and sound of the cheerful world without. With this knowledge before him, and his inborn fear of the dark hole, as daunting as the hand of death itself, he took his soul in his gripe, and wormed his way within.