“Just as I did,” Fred observed.

“I pushed my mustang ahead,” Mickey continued, “and he seemed to climb like a goat, but there was some places where I had to get off and help him.  I struck a spot yesterday where there was the best of water and grass, and the place looked so inviting that I turned him loose, intending to lave him to rist till to-day.  While he was there, I thought I might as well be taking observations around there, makin’ sartin’ to not get out of sight of the hoss, so I shouldn’t get lost from him.”

“And is he near by?”

“Not more than a mile away.  I was pokin’ ’round like a thaif in a pratie-patch, when I coom onto a small paice of soft airth, where, as sure as the sun shines, I seed your footprint.  I knowed it by its smallness, and by the print of them odd-shaped nails in your heel.  Well, you see, that just set me wild.  I knowed at once that by some hook or crook you had give the spalpeens the slip, and was wandering round kind of lost like mysilf.  So I started on the tracks, and followed them, till it got dark, as best I could, though they sometimes led me over the rocks and hard earth, in such a way that I could only guess at ’em.  When night came, I was pretty near this spot, but I was puzzled.  I could n’t tell where to look further, and I was afeared of gettin’ off altogether.  So I contented mesilf wid shtrayin’ here and there, and now and then givin’ out the signal that you and me used to toot when we was off on hunts together.  When this morning arriv’, I struck signs agin, and at last found that your track led toward these bushes, and thinks I to myself, thinks I, you’d crawled in there to take a snooze, and I hove ahead to wake you up, but I was too ambitious for me own good, as was the case when I proposed to Bridget O’Flannigan, and found that she had been already married to Tim McGubbins a twelvemonth, and had a pair of twins to boast of.  I own it wasn’t a dignified and graceful way of coming down-stairs, but I was down before I made up my mind.”

“Well, Mickey, we are here, and the great thing now is to get out.  Can you tell any way?”

The Irishman took the matter very philosophically.  It would seem that any one who had dropped down from the outer world as had he, would feel a trifle nervous; but he acted as if he had kindled his camp-fire on the prairie, with the certainty that no enemy was within a hundred miles.

When he and his young friend had eaten all they needed, there was still a goodly quantity left, which he folded up with as much care in the same piece of paper as though it were a tiara of diamonds.

“We won’t throw that away just yet.  It’s one of them things that may come into use, as me mither used to say when she laid the brickbats within aisy raich, and looked very knowingly at her old man.”

After the completion of the meal, man and boy occupied themselves for some time in gathering fuel, for it was their purpose to keep the fire going continually, so long as they remained in the cave—­that is, if the thing were possible.  There was an immense quantity of wood; it had probably been thrown in from above, as coal is shoveled into the mouth of a furnace, and it must have been intended for the use of parties who had been in the cave before.