"Well, get up and dress," advised Sandy. "If we get into the mine
tonight, we'll have to hurry!"

"Have you figured out how we're going to get into the mine?" asked
Tommy. "It will be the ladders for us, I guess."

"Of course, it'll be the ladders!" replied Sandy.

"Do you suppose Canfield is coming here in the middle of the night to
turn on the power?"

"I wonder how deep the shaft is?" asked Tommy. "I guess this one must
be about five hundred feet."

"Is that a guess, or a piece of positive information?"

"It's a guess," laughed Sandy, drawing on his shoes and walking softly
across the bare floor in the direction of the shaft.

The boys passed out of the sleeping chamber into a passage which led
directly to the shaft of the mine. This shaft was perhaps twenty feet
in width. It included the air shaft, the division where the pumps were
operated, and two divisions for the cages which lifted the coal from
the bottom of the mine. The pumps were not working, of course, and no
air was being forced down.

One of the cages lay at the top so the other must have been at the
bottom of the shaft. As the boys looked down into the shaft, Tommy
seized his chum by the arm and whispered: