Yard by yard the adit crept on along the dipping lode, and one evening they stood watching Weston, who was carefully tamping a stick of giant-powder in a hole drilled in the stone.

The ore had shown signs of getting richer the last few days, but their powder was rapidly running out, and they had not decided yet where they were to obtain a fresh supply.

His directors had sent him neither the promised machines nor the money with which to hire labor, and he chafed at the fact that, as it was a long and arduous journey to the nearest station where he could reach the wires, he could not ascertain the cause of the delay.
The storekeeper nodded when at length Weston carefully clamped down a big copper cap on a length of snaky fuse and inserted it in another hole.
"Well," he said, "I guess this shot will settle whether there's high-grade ore in front of us." He struck a sputtering sulphur match and touched the fuses.
"Now," he said, "we'll get out just as quickly as possible." They ran down the adit, with Devine in front swinging a blinking lamp, and crawled out, gasping, into the cold evening air as dusk was closing down.

Then they sat around and waited until there was a crash and a muffled rumbling.

Weston stood up, but Saunders made a sign of expostulation.
"You just sit down again and take a smoke," he said.