He made his way into the Mount of Gold drive again.  An impulse moved him to block the opening connecting the two drives with loose reef, and the same impulse led him to hide the skin bag containing the gold away under the dirt in the shaft of the Mount of Gold.  The excitement that had driven him to the rescue of Harry Hardy sustained him till he had crawled out into the quarry; then his strength all went out of him, and left him sick and wretched.  He was famished, all his limbs ached with a dull insistent pain after he had rested for a few minutes, and his weariness was so great that it was a terrible task to drag himself out of the quarry.  But he succeeded in gaining the hillside at length, and hastened as quickly as he could through the trees in the direction of the Silver Stream, stumbling as he went, and sobbing quietly in utter collapse of strength and spirit.

When Dick reached the vicinity of the big mine he was surprised to find the brace deserted.  He stole up and peered through the engine-house window at the driver’s clock, and saw with dull amazement that it was not yet half-past twelve.  It had taken him little over half an hour to reach Harry Hardy and return—­it seemed to him that he had been toiling for many hours.  He crept in between the long stacks of firewood, made a bed on the soft bark, and waited.  The first night shift of the week did not start work till one o’clock on Monday morning, and the mine was silent save for the slow puffing of the pumping engine and the deliberate rumbling of the bob.

Lying on his stomach on the bark, the boy fixed his eyes upon the mine and suffered through the slow dragging minutes.  He wept incessantly, and his teeth chattered, although the night was warm.  A new fear had taken possession of him, a fear that Harry Hardy, if alive, would perhaps move and roll down the incline into the water again before the miners reached him.  He waited in an agony of anxiety, and his eyes never moved from the cage at the surface.

The miners began to come in at length, with heavy footsteps, swinging their crib billies, calling to each other in gruff voices.  Lamps were lit upon the brace, and in the boiler-house and changing shed, and Dick saw the first cageful of men drop out of sight, as the engine groaned and the mine took up its busy duties again.

One cage-load after another went down, and still Dick waited.  At last there came a wild, unusual beat of the knocker.  The boy knew the signal and started up on his knees.  A man rushed past the end of the stacks to knock up Manager Holden.  Others gathered excitedly about the mouth of the shaft, and the long flat ropes spinning over the pulleys travelled at top speed.

Soon Harry was brought to the surface, and placed upon a hurdle, and four men carried him away across the paddocks towards Waddy.  Dick followed at a safe distance.  Locky McRae, the boss of the shift, had run on ahead, probably to warn Mrs. Hardy.