They stood still for a moment. All about them, as in the crypt of some vast cathedral, were specks of light, showing through the dense air, the candles of the miners. Now and then in the blur there appeared a distorted shape, as some one moved before a candle. Through all, loud, insistent, steady, rang the clink-clang, clink-clang, clink-clang of the drills and hammers, as a dozen miners drove home the holes into the breast of the stope, the tapping of the cleaning rods, as they spooned out the mud, and the rattle of shovels on rock, as the “muckers” loaded the ore cars. Mixed with these sounds was a sharp hissing, as the miners drew in their breath, swaying back for the driving blow on the heads of the drills. As she grew accustomed to the dim light, Jean could make out the miners who were nearest to her, as, in teams of two, stripped to the waist, their bodies shiny with sweat, they battered on the walls. Faintly the lines of grim archways began to grow out of the dark, where rough pillars had been left to support the roofing. Far off, up a cross-cut, she could see more candles swaying. Two men near her were toiling at a windlass, raising the water from a new winze. She leaned against the wall, and something rattled tinnily. It was a pile of canteens, all warm with the heat of the air. Jean gasped with the very wonder of the scene. To the others it was merely the commonplace of their work. Burns called out to Loring: “We are going to take Mr. Cameron through to the new stope. It is pretty hard climbing getting through to there. I guess the lady had better wait here with you, Mr. Loring.” The voices of the rest of the party sounded faint and far away. Jean watched the light of their candles sway and dip, as they walked off down a tunnel, then disappear as a supporting pillar hid them from view. Loring led her to one side of the stope, and drove the spike of his candle stick into a niche in the soft rock wall. He pointed to a pile of loose ore. “We can sit here until your father returns. They are not working this end of the stope now,” he said. She nodded and seated herself with her back against the wall. Silent, with her chin propped firmly in her clenched hands, she strained her eyes to look at the dim lights and shadows at the other end of the stope, and watched the shadows grow into things, as she stared. Far beneath her, in the solid rock, she heard faint indistinct taps. A trifle awed by the mystery she turned to Loring. “What is that sound?” she asked. “Those are ‘Tommy knockers,’” he answered gravely. “They are the ghosts of men who were killed in an explosion here, tapping steadily for help.” “Really?” she asked, half laughing. “It might be,” answered Loring, “but the fact of it is that those are men drilling on the next level. The sound now and then carries clear through the rock.”