There was a crowd of miners now, watching for the cage to appear. The jargon of Finnish comment sounded to Mr. Wade like the buzzing of bees. Then the cage came in sight. Empty and dripping wet.

      The next second everything was action, and Richards its mainspring. His orders pelted down like hailstones. Men, tools, paraphernalia, filled the cage. Other men went racing off on surface errands.

      Mr. Wade, paralyzed by his complete ignorance of conditions or remedies, seemed crushed under the consciousness of casualty. Richards caught him by the arm and shook him into attention.

      “We’ll bring them up, if they are alive,” he shouted to him, as though he were deaf.

      Then he stepped into the cage, and down it went again. Mr. Wade leaned back against the wall, motionless, his eyes fixed on the hole where it had disappeared.

      But over all the little town the news was spreading like wildfire.

      John Carrington had spent a horrible morning. When the trap came back, and the stable boy Ike, who was driving, announced that Mr. Ned had sent him home, John Carrington promptly demanded why.

      “I dunno,” said the boy. “He said, ‘That’s all,’ so I come.”

      It couldn’t be possible that Ned had gone down the Tray-Spot! Ned, who had never shown the slightest eagerness to go down the Star. But what – And why —