a look of suffering in his eyes, as if he were feeling the pains of humanity crucified anew, and the chair began to drop slowly below the surface, swinging down into the darkness and the evil dangers that lurked below.  Her face was the last thing he saw—­a face full of agony yet calm with a great renunciation coming to birth in her eyes, her lips drawn thin like a slit in her face and all the color gone from them, the head bent a little as if a great blow had fallen upon her—­an island of agony set in a sea of despair.

A wild impulse seized him to go back.  It was too much to ask of a woman, he felt.  Too great a burden of tragedy to heap upon one soul, as he cast his mind back through the suffering years and viewed all the pain she had borne, and the terrible Gethsemane which her life had been; but as the chair swung round he clutched the swaying rope and with the other hand steadied it from crashing against the side of the shaft as they slowly dropped lower and lower into the darkness and the evil smells which hung around.

“Things look bad here,” said his comrade as they passed down where at some time a huge portion from the side had fallen out and down into the bottom of the old shaft.

“Ay,” answered Robert, “everything seems just ready to collapse,” and they dropped lower and lower, swaying from side to side, cautiously guiding their swinging chair from the moss-oozing side, their nerves strained as they listened to the creeking rope as it was paid out from above.

“Holy God,” cried his mate, “that was a near thing,” as a huge mass of rocks and slimy moss lunged out a little below them and hurtled away in a loud rumbling noise.

Robert pulled the signal cord to stop and looked up to see the white clouds passing over the narrow funnel-like shaft in which they hung.  Then he gave the signal to let out again noting how thick with damp the atmosphere was becoming, and having difficulty with his light.

Lower and lower they swung and dropped down into the old shaft and as the rope creaked and crazed above them it lilted: 

  “Choose, choose, wha’ you’ll tak’,
  Wha’ you’ll tak’, wha’ you’ll tak’,
  Choose, choose wha’ you’ll tak’,
  A laddie or a lassie.”

And the memory of the old lilt brought back other scenes again and he found himself guiding the chair from the shaft side steering it off with his hand at every rhythmic beat of the child song.

Soon they reached the bottom of the shaft, for it was not very deep, and found a mass of debris, almost choking up the roadways on either side of the bottom.  But they got out of their chair and soon began to “redd” away the stones though they found very great difficulty in getting the lamps to burn.  Occasionally, as they worked, little pieces came tumbling from the side of the shaft, telling its own tale, and as soon as Robert got a decent sized kind of opening made through the rocks which blocked the roadway he sent up the other man to bring down more help and to get others started to repair the old shaft by putting in stays and batons to preserve the sides and so prevent them from caving in altogether.