CHAPTER XXIII.
Hardly realizing what he was doing or why he was doing it, Fairchild seized Anita in his arms, and raising her to his breast as though she were a child, rushed out through the cross-cut and along the cavern to the fissure, there to find Harry awaiting them.
"Put 'er in first!" said the Cornishman anxiously.

"The farther the safer.

Did you 'ear anything more ?" Fairchild obeyed, shaking his head in a negative to Harry's question, then squeezed into the fissure, edging along beside Anita, while Harry followed.
"What is it ?" she asked anxiously.
"Harry heard some sort of noise from above, as if the earth was crumbling.

He 's afraid the whole mine 's going to cave in again." "But if it does ?" "We can get out this way--somehow.

This connects up with a spring-hole; it leads out by Crazy Laura's house." "Ugh!" Anita shivered.