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given over. He proposed to explore another passage. He felt willing to risk Injun
Joe and all other terrors. But Becky was very weak. She had sunk into a dreary
apathy and would not be roused. She said she would wait, now, where she was,
and dieit would not be long. She told Tom to go with the kite-line and explore if
he chose; but she implored him to come back every little while and speak to her;
and she made him promise that when the awful time came, he would stay by her
and hold her hand until all was over.

Tom kissed her, with a choking sensation in his throat, and made a show of
being confident of finding the searchers or an escape from the cave; then he took
the kite-line in his hand and went groping down one of the passages on his
hands and knees, distressed with hunger and sick with bodings of coming
doom.