"It looks dark down there, does it not?" asked Julian, leaning on the windlass and peering down into the pit.
"It is dark enough now, but it will be lighter when I get down there with my lamp," replied Jack. "Now, Julian, are you sure you can hold me up?"
"Of course I can. If I can't, we had better get another man up here."
Jack stopped just long enough to shake Julian by the hand, then seized the rope and stepped into the bucket, his partner holding the windlass so that he would not descend too rapidly. Slowly he went down, until finally the bucket stopped.
"All right!" called Jack; and his voice sounded strangely, coming up from thirty feet underground. "This hole is bigger down here than it is at the top. Somebody has cut away on each side to try to find gold," and at last he started off toward the gully.
Julian leaned over the pit and followed his companion's movements by the light of his lamp. He saw him as he went around to the "false diggings," and finally his lamp disappeared from view as Jack went down toward the ravine. His face was very pale; he listened intently, but could not hear that rustling of feet nor that moaning sound that had frightened two men away from there, and his courage all came back to him.
"I wonder what those men were thinking of when they started that story about this mine being haunted?" Julian muttered to himself. "There is nothing here to trouble anyone."
Hardly had this thought been framed in Julian's mind than there came a most startling and thrilling interruption. The boy was leaning over the pit with his head turned on one side, so that he could hear any unusual sounds going on below, and all of a sudden he sprang to his feet and acted very much as though he wanted to go below to Jack's assistance. He distinctly heard that rustling of feet over the rocks below, some of them made by Jack as he ran toward the bucket, and the other by something else that made Julian's heart stand still. And with that sound came others—moans or shrieks, Julian couldn't tell which—until they seemed to fill the pit all around him. This lasted but a few seconds, and then came the report of Jack's revolver and the sound was caught up by the echoes until it appeared to Julian that a whole battery of artillery had been fired at once.
"There!" said Julian, greatly relieved to know that Jack had seen something to shoot at. "I guess one ghost has got his death at last!"
A moment afterward came Jack's frantic pull on the rope, accompanied by his frightened voice—