But the fire was burning brightly now, and she made her way towards it, thankful to find some one besides herself in that great loneliness, yet with many misgivings as to the kind of people she might find camped about that fire.
In mining districts, the population is always rough in the out-of-the-way hollows of the hills. There were a great many men working who were wanted by the police on both sides of the border, and it was characters like these whom Nell was so afraid of encountering.
But the miners were not all bad, and she knew very well that if it were any of the Syndicate upon whom she chanced to stumble she would be as safe as in her own home, for, thanks to her courage in the matter of the depot robbery, they all regarded her as an absolute heroine, and treated her with the utmost deference.
She was near enough now to see that a man was bending over the fire, apparently cooking supper, and she was hurrying in order to get over the ordeal of accosting him, when the ground suddenly gave way under her feet, and, with a terrified cry, she plunged downward into the darkness.
If she had been watching the path half as carefully as she watched the fire, she would have seen a pocket yawning before her unwary feet, and so have been saved the pain and humiliation of her tumble.
At the sound of her cry, the man who was cooking supper abruptly suspended operations, and sent an answering shout through the darkness.
“What is wrong; do you want help?”
Nell heard the shout through the confusion of her fall, and the sound somehow brought a sense of comfort to her, for the voice had a cheery, resolute ring which was reassuring.
But she was brought up with a sudden jerk on reaching the bottom of the pocket, and lay there for a minute or two, with so much of the breath knocked out of her that she had no power even to shout back.
Then she heard footsteps, and saw a gleam of light. The man had made himself a torch by stuffing a great resinous bough in the fire, and was holding it aloft in order to see better.