strokes of the picks.  He crept still closer, shadowing his lamp between his hands, and crouching uneasily in the shadows.  The group of men nearest him were undoubtedly Swedes, as they were conversing in that language, working with much deliberation in the absence of the boss.  Winston rose up, his shadow becoming plainly visible on the rock wall, one hand held before his mouth to better muffle the sound of his voice.  The hollow echoing along those underground caverns tended to make all noise unrecognizable.

“Yust two of you fellars bettar come by me, an’ gif a leeft,” he ventured, doubtfully.

Those nearer faces down the tunnel were turned toward the voice in sudden, bewildered surprise, the lights flickering as the heads uplifted.

“Vas it you, Nels Swanson?”

“Yas, I tank so; I yust want Peterson an’ Ole.  Meester Burke vas got hurt in the new level, an’ I couldn’t leeft him alone.”

He saw the two start promptly, dropping their picks, their heavy boots crunching along the floor, the flapping hat-brims hiding their eyes and shadowing their faces.  For a moment he lingered beside the falsework, permitting the light from his lamp to flicker before them as a beacon; then he hid the tiny flame within his cap, and ran swiftly down the main tunnel.  Confident now of Burke’s early rescue, he must grasp this opportunity for an immediate escape from the mine.  A hundred feet from the foot of the shaft he suddenly came upon the advancing tram-car, a diminutive mule pulling lazily in the rope traces, the humping figure of a boy hanging on behind.  The two gazed at each other through the smoke of a sputtering wick.

“Hurry up,” spoke Winston, sharply.  “Burke’s hurt, and they’ll need your car to carry him out in.  What’s the signal for the cage?”

The boy stood silent, his mouth wide open, staring at him stupidly.

“Do you hear, you lunk-head?  I ’m after a doctor; how do you signal the cage?”

“Twa yanks on the cord, meester,” was the grudging reply.  “Wha was ye, onyhow?” But Winston, unheeding the question, was already off, his only thought the necessity of immediately attaining the surface in safety, ahead of the spreading of an alarm.

The cage shot speedily upward through the intense darkness, past the deserted forty-foot gallery, and emerged into the gray light of dawn flooding the shafthouse.  Blinking from those long hours passed in the darkness below, Winston distinguished dimly a number of strange figures grouped before him.  An instant he paused in uncertainty, his hand shading his eyes; then, as he stepped almost blindly forward he came suddenly face to face with Biff Farnham.  A second their glances met, both alike startled, bewildered, doubtful—­then the jaw of the gambler set firm, his hand dropped like lightning toward his hip, and Winston, every ounce of strength thrown into the swift blow, struck him squarely between the eyes.  The man went over as though shot, yet before he even hit the floor, the other had leaped across the reeling body, and dashed, stumbling and falling, down the steep slope of the dump-pile, crashing head first into the thick underbrush below.