Ainslee's magazine, Volume 16, No. 3, October, 1905

“A very good idea,” said Mr. Wade, decisively.

Hastings’ first phrase had smitten him with a sudden contrition. He felt, too, that if he was going to come out to Yellow Dog himself, and if his nephew stayed there he should, of course, come out once a year, at least, a cozily built bungalow, where he might be made comfortable, was in the line of a necessity. “I should get about it at once,” he declared.

“Perhaps you would like to drive about this morning, and select your site for ‘A Bungalow for One,’” said young Carrington, laughingly. There was a slightly mocking emphasis on the last word.

“I shouldn’t have it too small,” said Mr. Wade, firmly.

Richards was whistling between his teeth now, a performance which always enraged Mr. Wade.

“But we will have to let the site go for this morning, at least;” and there was a precise distinctness about Mr. Wade’s words now. “Mr. Richards has just been arranging to take us down the mine this morning.”

Richards wheeled round, surprised.

Young Carrington rose with an unhurried ease.

“Then, I must not detain you,” he said, calmly.

“And why would it not be a good idea for you to send one of your men, in whom you have full confidence, down with us?” – Mr. Wade’s tone was entirely urbane. “He would, perhaps, be able not only to assure himself of actual conditions, but to explain your contention to us in the workings under discussion.”

Richards held himself tense.

“I should like to send our shift boss, with your permission,” said young Carrington, quietly, though inwardly he exulted. “I will have him meet you at your shaft house whenever you say.”

“Mr. Wade,” said Richards, and the effort he made to control himself made the veins in his face distend purplingly, “when Mr. John Carrington is well enough to go down our mine, I shall be glad” – how the word choked him – “to take him down myself; but Trevanion, their shift boss, is at the bottom of the trouble. He’s tricky and dishonest. I’d rather resign than take him down the mine.”

For in the time that would elapse before John Carrington was able to take such a jaunt much could be done.

There was a moment’s pause, in which Richards’ claim and Carrington’s were equi-balanced. The very fact of Hastings’ personal bias held him inactive.

Then young Carrington spoke.

“I will answer for Trevanion’s honesty with my own,” he said. There was an emotional note in the voice he tried to hold steady.

“Off the same piece, I guess,” sneered Richards, nastily.

The scales swayed down on the Carrington side.

Mr. Wade’s code did not permit his guests to be insulted by his subordinates.

“My dear Mr. Carrington, you leave us no option when you take that stand,” he said, suavely. “Whenever your man is ready, then.”

“I think he is still at the house with my father,” said young Carrington, unsteadily. “I can telephone from the station here.”

Mr. Wade looked out of the window. Beside Carrington’s trap stood the landau of yesterday. “If you will drive home and bring your man over, we will go directly to the mine with Mr. Richards,” he said.

* * * * *

Young Carrington, bursting in upon his father and Trevanion, told it all in a breath.

Trevanion rose with the last word.

“The sooner I’m there the better,” he said, phlegmatically.

“It’s queer business,” said John Carrington, frowning. “Keep your eyes open. What do you think of it?”

“I’ll tell you when I come up,” said Trevanion. “If I don’t come up, you’ll look after my boy?”

John Carrington nodded.

“Keep close to young Hastings,” he said, tersely. “Don’t let Richards get behind you alone. I’m inclined to think, though, that the whole thing will be a farce. He’ll take you into a few levels where there couldn’t be any question, and that will be all. Wade and his nephew won’t know. And that will be all there is to it.”

“I’ll drive you over,” said Ned. His eyes were bright with excitement.

Trevanion grinned as he settled himself in the trap.

“I’m going to get my swell ride before I go down,” he said. “Mostly they take ’em when they come up – in a box.”

* * * * *

The others were waiting, garbed in oilskins, candles in their caps – precautionary measures which inclined Mr. Wade to feel that there was something wrong in the management of a mine that was neither lighted nor heated.

Hastings was struggling not to chafe under his rôle of masterly inactivity; he comforted himself with the thought that it was causing things to move in the right direction, at any rate.

Richards’ expression was sardonic. As Carrington had surmised, he proposed to tire out the greenhorns by an exhaustive progress through workings which would be of no possible interest to Trevanion.

He calculated shrewdly about how long it would take before they would be glad to come up. If Trevanion remained behind them, or if he went down without them later – Richards shrugged his shoulders. It was easy for a man to fall down an uncovered winze in a strange mine. And the fall would explain any bruises.

As they started for the cage, he turned to young Carrington. His smile was distinctly disagreeable.

“Sorry you don’t feel like coming, too,” he said, “but you might catch cold or get your clothes dirty.”

Whatever faults there were to young Carrington’s credit, cowardice was not one of them. Not that foolhardiness is not almost as reprehensible.

“If you’ll lend me a cap and a pair of boots, I shall be delighted,” he answered instantly.

“No, Mr. Ned. You’re not in this,” Trevanion remonstrated.

Young Carrington was pulling on his cap composedly now.

“You’ve never been down the Star, even. You won’t be of any use,” Trevanion insisted. Young Carrington was getting into an oilskin coat. Richards had not thought he would.

“I’ll telephone your father,” Trevanion declared.

“Then I’ll go down without you while you’re doing it,” young Carrington declared, willfully.

Trevanion followed him into the cage without more ado. But he didn’t like it.

As the cage dropped into the blackness of the shaft, Richards thought with malicious pleasure that he would outwit them all. Trevanion, holding it everyday work for himself, was uneasy over the boy; Hastings was impatient at his own ignorance – he hated to feel so out of his sphere; Mr. Wade, reviewing each successive stage of the proceedings which had placed him in his present situation, called himself what he would have slain any fellow man for thinking, a silly old fool; and Carrington – ah, a curious tangle of thoughts was young Carrington’s brain, with a curious after-vision of a bright blue sky.