“I thought it all over. I thought of my poverty and the fortune that lay before me. I thought of the chance of death if the cave was full of water. I threw down my pick, and almost determined to go away, and not take the risk. Then I looked at my ragged clothes, and remembered that they were all I had, and that I hadn’t money enough to buy a breakfast. Then I stooped and grasped the pick, and took a firm hold of the handle.
“‘Here goes,’ I said, ‘for one thing or the other.’ I set my teeth, swung the pick, and tapped the ceiling above me.
A FORTUNE AT ONE BLOW.
“The water came down; I dropped to the floor, and felt that I was lost. I must have fainted, for the next thing I remember, my candle, which was only half burned when I struck the blow, was nearly consumed, and I was lying there soaked in a small pool that surrounded me.
“I rose, rubbed my eyes, and looked around, and then I saw how it was. There had been a few buckets of water in the chamber above, where there might have been hogsheads. I was alive and safe, and the chamber was opened.
“I lighted another candle, and went to work enlarging the hole I had made. In a little while I was able to climb through it; and there, all around me, lay blocks of rich ore; and I felt that I was no longer the poor vagabond I had been a few hours before. But I don’t think I would go through that excitement again for all the lead mines that ever were known.”
XLII.
MINING IN THE BLACK HILLS. THE WONDERFUL MINE UNDER LAKE SUPERIOR.