“No, sir!” exclaimed Rick, gritting his teeth to keep back a groan of anguish.
So they went on. But when Uncle Tod himself slipped over a small ledge, turning on his ankle with force enough to make him limp, and when Chot just saved himself from plunging into another hole, Uncle Tod said:
“What?” cried Rick. “Why, we haven’t explored half the tunnel yet!”
“Yes we have,” was the answer. “There’s the end now! It is shorter than I thought, and there isn’t a sign of water. I’m through I tell you. Might as well give up the mine.”
“What do you mean—the end of the tunnel?” asked Rick.
In answer his uncle pointed to the right and the boys could see daylight glimmering where, before, only invisible blackness had been ahead of them.
“Yes, boys,” went on Uncle Tod, “it looks as though we had played the game out. There’s the end of the tunnel—it’s much shorter than I ever thought, for Sam and I never came this far before—and we haven’t seen a drop of water the whole length.”
They had walked to where daylight gleamed and found that they could pass out of the tunnel into the open. They emerged at the side of a hill, very much the same sort of hill that was behind the cabin at the mine camp. Below them lay the valley, winding off to the east and west—a deserted desolate valley, dotted here and there, perhaps, with the camps of hopeful miners, but which camps were too small to be seen amid the trees and bushes.
“The river was here once,” said Uncle Tod, “but it’s gone now.”
“How can you tell it was here?” asked Chot.
“By the way the stones are worn,” was the answer. “See how smooth and rounded they are, where water has been flowing over them for years and years. But there is no water now, worse luck!”
The boys easily recognized the dry bed of some former stream—Lost River beyond all doubt. But where was Lost River now? That is what they wanted to know.
As Uncle Tod had said, the tunnel was much shorter than he had supposed. They had come not more than three miles under the mountain—a long enough passage if it had been dug by the hand of man for a railroad, as it was all through solid rock—but the rushing water which had, seemingly, bored the passage, took no note of time. It had centuries at its disposal, and had worn its way slowly.