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234 and mirthless chuckle, from some considerable distance, and calculated that he who laughed was some place in the clearing.

Now the blood of Thomas Barcus ran cold (or he thought it did, which amounts to much the same thing). For if his senses had played fair, the laugh he had heard was the laugh of Mr. Marrophat.

He twisted his head to one side and saw nothing but the wall. Twisting the other way, his effort was repaid by the discovery of Rose Trine in plight like unto his own—wrists and ankles bound, gagged into the bargain—the width of the shed between them.

But of Alan Law no sign. …

Tormented beyond endurance by the fears he suffered for the safety of his friend, he began painfully inching his way across the floor toward Rose, with what design, Heaven alone knows!

He had contrived to bridge the distance by half when a dark body put the sunlight of the open doorway into temporary eclipse. Another followed it. Boots clumped heavily on the flooring. Two pairs of hands seized him, one beneath the shoulders, the other beneath the knees, and he was lugged out into the sunlight, carried a considerable distance, and deposited within a few feet of the mouth of the abandoned mine just at the moment when he had satisfied himself that the purpose of his captors was to throw him into that black well.