'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.