第137页 / 共439页

"You'll find he does not need any 'putting off' on anybody."

"At least, he has a good friend in you. I think I'll tell him, so

that when he does condescend to become interested in a young

woman he may refer her to you for a recommendation."

The young wife borrowed for the occasion some of Miss Peggy's

audacity. "I'm recommending him to that young woman now, my

dear," she made answer.

Dunke's party left for the mine on schedule time, Water-proof

coats and high lace-boots had been borrowed for the ladies as a

protection against the moisture they were sure to meet in the

tunnels one thousand feet below the ground. The mine-owner had

had the hoisting-engine started for the occasion, and the cage

took them down as swiftly and as smoothly as a metropolitan

elevator. Nevertheless Margaret clung tightly to her friend, for

if was her first experience of the kind. She had never before

dropped nearly a quarter of a mile straight down into the heart

of the earth and she felt a smothered sensation, a sense of

danger induced by her unaccustomed surroundings. It is the

unknown that awes, and when she first stepped from the cage and

peered down the long, low tunnel through which a tramway ran she

caught her breath rather quickly. She had an active imagination,

and she conjured cave-ins, explosions, and all the other mine

horrors she had read about.