“I have come,” said the Governor, “to say to you, Grassette, that you still have a chance of life.”
He paused, and Grassette’s face took on a look of bewilderment and vague anxiety. A chance of life—what did it mean?
“Reprieve?” he asked, in a hoarse voice.
The Governor shook his head. “Not yet; but there is a chance. Something has happened. A man’s life is in danger, or it may be he is dead; but more likely he is alive. You took a life; perhaps you can save one now. Keeley’s Gulch, the mine there!”
“They have found it—gold?” asked Grassette, his eyes staring. He was forgetting for a moment where and what he was.
“He went to find it, the man whose life is in danger. He had heard from a trapper who had been a miner once. While he was there a landslip came, and the opening to the mine was closed up.”
“There were two ways in. Which one did he take?” cried Grassette.
“The only one he could take, the only one he or any one else knew. You know the other way in—you only, they say.”
“I found it—the easier, quick way in; a year ago I found it.”
“Was it near the other entrance?”