Dick found the three were looking to him for an explanation.

‘Ted’s real scared,’ he said.  ’We made a discovery this afternoon—­in there.’

‘In the big drive?’ asked Jacker.  The others looked startled.

Dick nodded, and took up the candle.  ‘Come an’ see,’ he said.

Dick led the way along the opposite drive, and his mates followed, not too eagerly, Ted bringing up the rear.  The drive was about eighty feet in extent.  Having reached the end, Dick held the candle low, and made visible to his wondering mates a black cavity about eighteen inches in diameter in one corner near the floor.

‘We were workin’ in here a bit for a change this afternoon after Peetree hunted us, an’ I broke through.’

‘What’s in there?’ asked Jacker in an awed voice.

‘Look,’ said Dick.

Jacker backed away; the other three kept a respectful distance and stared silently.

‘It’s on’y another drive,’ Dick explained.  ’It must come from the Red Hand, I think.’

Dick was quite undisturbed, but the others were afraid, and even when they had returned to their own drive cast many doubting glances back into the darkness.  In the mine as they had known it before everything was definite, and there was nothing of which a boy of spirit need be afraid.  The shaft was choked with dirt a few feet below their landing-planks, and there was no spot in which a mystery might lurk; but it was very different now with that black hole leading Heaven knew into what awesome depths, harbouring goodness knew what horrors.  Ted’s defection had suddenly become the sentiment of the majority.  At that moment Dick could have counted on Peterson alone had need arisen.

‘We’ll go down there an’ explore them workin’s,’ said Dick, having lit a piece of dry root and composed himself for a smoke.

‘In the daytime, Morgan,’ said Jacker hastily and with diffidence.

‘All right; but it don’t make no difference down here, you know.’

Jacker thought it did, for although it was always night in the drives, the consciousness that the earth above was flooded with sunlight was a great heartener.

‘Don’t you think you’d best give this up for once—­this bushranger game?’ ventured Jacker.

‘Why?’ Dick’s eyes were round with surprise.

‘Oh, well, Twitter’s jack of it, an’ I don’t think it’s much fun.’  Jacker had assumed a careless air.  ‘See here, Dick,’ he continued smartly, ’the Cow Flat chaps made a raid last night, an’ took Butts an’ three others—­mine among ’em.’

This was an important matter.  Butts was Dick’s big grey billygoat, the best goat in harness the boys had ever known or ever heard of; and the ‘Cow Flat chaps’ were the boys of a small centre about two miles and a half further down the creek, between whom and the boys of Waddy there existed an interminable feud that led them to fight on sight, and steal such of each other’s possessions as could be easily and expeditiously removed.  Dick’s excitement soon evaporated; evidently root smoking was conducive to a philosophical frame of mind.