Old Man Anderson and Detroit Jim huddled close to each other in the darkness of the conduit.  A hundred times they had crawled from one end to the other of their vaultlike trap!  In their desperate and fruitless search for an outlet to the conduit they had burned many matches and several candles.  Besides, Old Man Anderson had required light in which to fight off his attacks of nerves, and the last of the candles had gone for that.  Now total darkness enveloped them.

The conduit was blocked!  By earth at one end, and by a brick wall at the other!  All along the winding hundred feet of vault they had hacked out brick after brick only to encounter solid earth behind.  Only a few tins of food remained and the water was wholly gone; the liquid from the food cans only served to increase their thirst.

Old Man Anderson had grown to loathe Detroit Jim.  Every word he murmured, every movement he made, intensified the loathing.  He had made up his mind that Jim was planning to desert him the next time he should fall asleep; perhaps would kill him and leave him there—­in the dark.  The two had practically ceased speaking to each other.  In his mental confusion Old Man Anderson kept revolving in his mind, with satisfaction, a new plan he had evolved.  The next time Jim should fall asleep he would crawl back through the aperture in the conduit wall, pry up the boards over the opening into the prison yard, wriggle out, and take his chances in getting over the wall somehow!  Better even be shot by a guard than die like a rat in this unspeakable place, as he was doing, where he couldn’t stand up and dared not lie down on account of the things that were forever crawling through the place!  His contemplation of his plan was broken in upon by his companion clutching him spasmodically by the arm.  The old man’s cry died in his throat.

Footsteps!  Dull and distant they were, and somewhere above them—­momentarily more distinct—­receding—­gone!

Detroit Jim pulled Andersen’s head toward him, and whispered: 

“Sidewalk!  People going by!  We’ve never sat right here before!  We wouldn’t hear them if they weren’t walking on stone, or slate, or something hard!”

The old man’s heart pounded like a trip-hammer.  Detroit Jim seized the pick and began to pry the bricks loose from the arched roof of the conduit.  They worked like mad, picking, hacking, pulling, piling the bricks softly down on the conduit floor.

Once, for an instant, Jim stopped working.  “How far from the hole we came in through, do you think we are?” he whispered.

“’Bout a hundred feet, I guess,” answered the old man.  “Why?”

Without replying Detroit Jim resumed his picking, picking, at the bricks.  A hundred feet from where they had entered would not be under the sidewalk.  Finally, he understood.  This conduit wound around a good deal; it would take a hundred winding feet to cover thirty straightaway.