“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, winding¹ off to the east and west—a deserted² desolate³ 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.
 
Entering the tunnel at the camp, the explorers had wound their way through it, with the comparatively unimportant accidents I have described, and had emerged through a hole in the side of the mountain. All about them were water-worn stones, and they could trace where the stream had flowed downward from where they stood, but in the opposite direction from that in which they had been traveling. In other words they had walked against the direction of the stream.
 
“And that’s the queer part of it,” said Uncle Tod. “All along, boys, we’ve been going up grade through the tunnel, and that means the water of Lost River flowed down, just as it did before my mine went dry. Now we get here and at this point the course of the stream shows that the water must have flowed the other way, in the same direction we have been going.”
 
“You mean this hole here, where we just came out, is a sort of diving place,” suggested Rick.
 
“That’s it—a miniature watershed⁴. Back of us, in the tunnel where we just came from, the water flowed east. Here it began and flowed west—that is when there was any water.
 
“So I can’t see,” went on Uncle Tod, “any use in keeping on. Lost River was here, but it’s gone. When it will come back—no one knows. Not much use waiting for it, I reckon. I don’t see why Sam and I didn’t find this out before, but he got frightened by a lot of queer noises in the tunnel, and wouldn’t keep on. I didn’t dare risk going alone, and we never got as far as here.
 
“But this is the end—I’m going to give up now!”
 
“It’s too bad,” said Rick, nursing his bruised⁵ arm tenderly. “I thought we’d find something. What are you going to do now, Uncle Tod?”
 
“Oh, give up and go back east, I reckon. I’ve got other mines in different parts of the country, but I wanted this to pan out well for Sam’s sake. It’s the only one he has an interest in. But it wasn’t to be, I guess. I’m sorry I brought you boys out on such a wild-goose chase!”
 
“Oh, we don’t mind,” Rick hastened to say.
 
“I guess not!” cried Chot. “We’ve had packs of fun!”
 
“And we’ll have more,” suggested Rick. “We don’t have to go back right away; do we?”
 
“No, I reckon not,” his uncle said. “Might as well stay and have a little vacation while you’re here. And maybe Sam and I will prospect⁶ around a bit. Might happen to hit on some nuggets or pockets that would pay us for our grub, anyhow. We’ll stay a while. But now I’m going to head back for camp.”
 
“Through the tunnel?” asked Rick.
 
&ld............