“I’ll tell you when I come up,” said Trevanion. “If I don’t come up, you’ll look after my boy?”
John Carrington nodded.
“Keep close to young Hastings,” he said, tersely. “Don’t let Richards get behind you alone. I’m inclined to think, though, that the whole thing will be a farce. He’ll take you into a few levels where there couldn’t be any question, and that will be all. Wade and his nephew won’t know. And that will be all there is to it.”
“I’ll drive you over,” said Ned. His eyes were bright with excitement.
Trevanion grinned as he settled himself in the trap.
“I’m going to get my swell ride before I go down,” he said. “Mostly they take ’em when they come up—in a box.”
* * * * *
The others were waiting, garbed in oilskins, candles in their caps—precautionary measures which inclined Mr. Wade to feel that there was something wrong in the management of a mine that was neither lighted nor heated.
Hastings was struggling not to chafe under his rôle of masterly inactivity; he comforted himself with the thought that it was causing things to move in the right direction, at any rate.
Richards’ expression was sardonic. As Carrington had surmised, he proposed to tire out the greenhorns by an exhaustive progress through workings which would be of no possible interest to Trevanion.