"And your own tunnel?" said Mulrady, springing to his feet in
excitement. "And YOUR strike?"

"Is still there!"

The next instant, and before another question could be asked, Slinn
had darted from the room. In the exaltation of that supreme
discovery he regained the full control of his mind and body.
Mulrady and Don Caesar, no less excited, followed him precipitately,
and with difficulty kept up with his feverish speed. Their way lay
along the base of the hill below Mulrady's shaft, and on a line with
Masters' abandoned tunnel. Only once he stopped to snatch a pick
from the hand of an astonished Chinaman at work in a ditch, as he
still kept on his way, a quarter of a mile beyond the shaft. Here
he stopped before a jagged hole in the hillside. Bared to the sky
and air, the very openness of its abandonment, its unpropitious
position, and distance from the strike in Mulrady's shaft had no
doubt preserved its integrity from wayfarer or prospector.

"You can't go in there alone, and without a light," said Mulrady,
laying his hand on the arm of the excited man. "Let me get more
help and proper tools."

"I know every step in the dark as in the daylight," returned Slinn,
struggling. "Let me go, while I have yet strength and reason!
Stand aside!"

He broke from them, and the next moment was swallowed up in the
yawning blackness. They waited with bated breath until, after a
seeming eternity of night and silence, they heard his returning