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"My father always thought there was a shaft hole there," answered Amos, "and very likely there may be, and time have worn it to the light, for Vitifer Mine used to run out into a lot of passages that be deserted now, and there's the famous adit in Smallcumbe Goyle, half a mile away, to the west, long deserted now; and when I was a child, me and my brothers often played in the mouth of it.

Clambering, still to the left, across a boulder which fairly overhung the sea, she struck a match, lit the candle in her lantern, and held it up before a dark hole a second adit pierced in the cliff-side and running west, as the other ran south-by-east. "Be careful, now!" she warned them again, and ducked her head as she entered the tunnel, which was scarcely more than five feet high.

At least, this was the case a few years ago. Several men besides its owners had sought shelter from the heat and sparks in the adit, and they evidently agreed with Saunders that it was advisable to crawl back into shelter as soon as possible; but Weston stood still.

The adit which drains the mines of Gwennap in Cornwall, with its branches, is thirty miles long. Those of the silver mines of Saxony are scarcely less extensive, and the Ernst-August-Stollen, or great drain of the mines of the Harz, is fifteen miles long.

First, upon the river, at the mouth of the adit, was a stamping-mill, where gangs of stamps were playing in troughs, and reducing the hard ore to a coarse powder. A little way farther down the stream the ore was ground, and then, in blast ovens or furnaces, was heated until all the baser metals in the ore became charged with oxygen to such a degree that they would not unite with quicksilver.

Come, lads, lev us go an' see this place of danger." The miners rose at once as Maggot threw his forehammer on a heap of coals, put on his hat, and strode out of the forge with a reckless fling. A few minutes sufficed to bring them to the beach at the mouth of the adit.

"I wouldn't worry about the thing. If there isn't a club handy the next time you feel like doing anything of that kind I'm going to leave you severely alone." Then, through the roar and crackle of the fire, they heard a heavy crash, and one of the men nearest the mouth of the adit glanced at Weston significantly. "It's kind of fortunate you got through when you did," he said.

A trickle of water fell from a crack in the roof and running down the floor of the adit vanished into the gloom. Here and there a ragged projection caught the light, but the rest of the tunnel was hidden in impenetrable darkness. They went on cautiously, though Foster now felt anxious because there was no sign of Daly.

Expenses had outrun his calculations and he had encountered obstacles he had not foreseen. More money would soon be needed, and he must get results that would encourage its subscription and warrant his using Mrs. Allott's capital. Sometimes the adit roof came down and sometimes the sides crushed in; the inclination of the vein was irregular and the dip was often awkwardly steep.

Mine seems to have gone, and I feel I'd like to sit quiet a minute or two." The hand he thrust into his pocket came out through the bottom of it, for the lower part of the jacket was torn and burned; but one of the others produced a plug of tobacco, and when he had lighted his pipe Weston leaned back somewhat limply against the side of the adit.