Part 54 (2/2)

He walked back to where Joe lay sleeping heavily, after convincing himself of the reason why the turning had come to an end where it did, for the vein had run upward, gradually growing thinner till, at some thirty feet up, as far as he could make out by his dim light, the men had ceased working, probably from the supply not being worth their trouble.

Joe was muttering in his sleep when Gwyn reached his side, but for a time his words were unintelligible. Then quite plainly he said,--

”Be good for you, father. The mine will give you something to do, and then you won't have time to think so much of your old wounds.”

”And if he has got out safely and they never find us, this will be like a new wound for the poor old Major to think about,” mused Gwyn. ”How dreadful it is, and how helpless we seem! It's always the same; gallery after gallery, just alike, and that's why it's so puzzling. I wonder whether any of the old miners were ever lost here and starved to death.”

The thought was so horribly suggestive that the perspiration came out in great drops on the boy's face, and he glanced quickly to right and left, even holding up his lanthorn, fancying for the moment that he might catch sight of some dried-up traces of the poor unfortunates who had struggled on for days, as they had, and then sunk down to rise no more.

”How horrible!” he muttered; ”and how can Joe lie there sleeping, when perhaps our fate may be like theirs?”

But he had unconsciously started another train of thought which set him calculating, and took his attention from the imaginary horrors which had troubled him.

”Wandered about for days and days,” he mused. ”It seems like it, but that's impossible. It can't be much more than one, or we couldn't have kept on. We should have been starved to death. We couldn't have lived on water.”

He wiped his wet brow, and it seemed to him that the gallery they were in was not so stifling and hot, unless it was that he had grown weaker.

Still one thing was certain; he could breathe more freely.

”Getting used to it,” he thought; and, putting down the lanthorn, he seated himself with his back close to the wall.

Joe slept heavily, and the lad looked at him enviously.

”I couldn't sleep so peaceably as that,” he said half aloud. ”How can a fellow sleep when he doesn't know but what his father may be dying close by from starvation and weakness. It seems too bad.”

Gwyn opened the lanthorn and found that the candle was half burned down, and for a moment he thought of setting up another in its place, for fear he should go to sleep and it should burn out.

”Be such a pity,” he said, ”we don't want light while we're asleep; only to wake up here in this horrible place is enough to drive anybody mad.”

Then he closed the lanthorn again.

”I sha'n't go to sleep,” he muttered. ”In too much trouble.” And he began thinking in a sore, dreary way of his mother seated at home waiting for news of his father and of him.

”It'll nearly kill her,” he said. ”But she'll like it for me to have come here in search of poor dad. It would have been so cowardly if I hadn't come, and she would have felt ashamed of me. Yes, she'll like my dying like this.”

He paused, for his thoughts made him ponder.

”We can't be going to die,” he said to himself, ”or we shouldn't be taking it all so easily and be so quiet and calm. If we felt that we really were going to die, we should be half mad with horror, and run shrieking about till we dropped in a fit. No,” he said softly, ”it isn't like that. People on board s.h.i.+p, when they know it's going to sink, all behave quite calmly and patiently. There was that s.h.i.+p that was being burned with the soldiers on board. They all stood up before their officers, waiting for the end, and went down at last like men.

But I don't feel despairing like, and as if we were going to die.”

Then he began to think of his peaceful home life, and of the days at school till about a year ago, when he had come home to study military matters with his father and Major Jollivet, prior to being sent to one of the military colleges in about a year's time.

”And now this mining has altered everything,” mused Gwyn, ”and--”

He started violently, sprang up, and looked about him, for his name had been uttered loudly close to his ear.

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