“How is it that Mr. ’Arry have not arrive all this day?”
“Oh, he’s mooning somewhere. Off on a tramp I suppose.”
“Has he then his gun? No?”
“No, but he’s been about. He cleared away all the snow, and I saw he had been over to the fall.” Amalia turned pale as the shrewd old man’s eyes rested on her. 322 “He came back early, though, for I saw footprints both ways.”
“I hope he comes soon, for we have the good soup to-day, of the kind Mr. ’Arry so well likes.”
But he did not come soon, and it was with much misgiving that Larry set out to search for him. Finding no trails leading anywhere except the twice trodden one to the fall, he naturally turned into the mine and followed along the path, torch in hand, hallooing jovially as he went, but his voice only returned to him, reverberating hollowly. Then, remembering the ledge where they had last worked, and how he had meant to put in props before cutting away any more, he ran forward, certain of calamity, and found his young friend lying where he had fallen, the blood still oozing from a cut above the temple, where it had clotted.
For a moment Larry stood aghast, thinking him dead, but quickly seeing the fresh blood, he lifted the limp body and bound up the wound, and then Harry opened his eyes and smiled in Larry’s face. The big man in his joy could do nothing but storm and scold.
“Didn’t I tell ye to do no more here until we’d the props in? I’m thinking you’re a fool, and that’s what you are. If I didn’t tell ye we needed them here, you could have seen it for yourself––and here you’ve cut away all underneath. What did you do it for? I say!” Tenderly he gathered Harry in his arms and lifted him from the débris and loosened rock. “Now! Are you hurt anywhere else? Don’t try to stand. Bear on me. I say, bear on me.”
“Oh, put me down and let me walk. I’m not hurt. Just a cut. How long have you been here?”