George Manville Fenn (continued 3)

“If there is any thing I can do to make you more comfortable, Mr Trethick, I hope you’ll say so,” said Mrs Mullion, one morning as Geoffrey was just going out. “Both Madge and I have got so used to waiting on gentlemen that it comes quite natural to us.”

“I’m sure you are very kind,” said Geoffrey.

“Buttons on and darning, and that sort of thing, of course, we’ll see to. I used to do all that for our late clergyman, Mr Owen—a very nice, genuine man. He used to put me so in mind of poor Madge’s father. Ah!” she continued, sadly, “very different he was to his brother, Mr Paul—half-brothers, you know. Dear Edward never spoke like Thomas—Mr Paul—does. I don’t say but what he would be out of temper sometimes, all gentlemen will be, but he used to say his bad words inside like, so that you could not hear them.”

“A very good plan,” said Geoffrey, smiling.

“Thomas—Mr Paul, you know—says very strange things sometimes, but he means well, and he is a very, very good man.”

“Yes, so I believe,” replied Geoffrey.

“Our Mr Owen, too, was a very good man, and they were great friends. I liked him better than this Mr Lee. I went to hear him on Sunday, but I could not really make out what he meant, but I’ve no doubt he meant well.”

“Yes, of course,” said Geoffrey, “most clergymen do.”

“To be sure,” assented the amiable little woman. “Have you seen the Rumseys yet?”

“I’ve met the doctor,” replied Geoffrey.

“A very clever man,” said Mrs Mullion, “and his wife means well, but she drills the children so. She’s very proud, and thinks they have come down; but, as I say to my Madge, if she would not drill those poor children quite so much, and use a pocket-handkerchief to their noses, it would be so much better. Yes, Madge, I’m coming directly.”

Geoffrey wished she would go, for he wanted to write a letter; but the little lady kept prattling on.

“I want to see you get a good colour, Mr Trethick. You look Londony, you know. You must let me cook you a chop or a steak for breakfast—underdone, you know. Dr Rumsey says there’s nothing like it. So much better for you than fish; and I will say that of our butcher, he does have good meat. His only fault is that, as Mr Paul says, he seems to have a knife that will cut two pounds when you want one.”

“A common failing with butchers, I believe,” laughed Geoffrey.

“Yes,” said the little woman, innocently. “We get our milk there, and—to be sure! Now, look here, Mr Trethick, before you go out for those early morning walks of yours—”

“Mamma!”

“Yes, Madge, I’m coming! Bless the child! how impatient she is when I’m here. But, as I was going to say, you must let me beat you up a new-laid egg in a glass of fresh milk. Lornocks have got a new cow, an Alderney, with such a beautiful bust, and I never saw richer milk in my life.”

“But, my dear Mrs Mullion, I’m not an invalid!” laughed Geoffrey. “The only consumption I suffer from is that of the pocket.”

“Hallo! You here?” said old Mr Paul, stumping in.

“Yes, Thomas. I was advising Mr Trethick about his health.”

“Stuff! He’s all health! Don’t take any notice of her, Trethick, or she’ll want to put you in a poultice every night! There, be off, woman!”

“Yes, dear, I’m going,” said the little woman, gently.

“She’ll be giving you beef-tea and arrow-root till you can’t see,” growled the old fellow. “I believe she was a nurse once.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, before she was born what she is.”

Geoffrey stared.

“And that she’ll be a hen next, like Mrs Rumsey, to set on eggs and cluck over chickens.”

“Metempsychosis?” said Geoffrey.

“Hah! yes! The niggers out in Poonah are right as right about that.”

“Very likely,” said Geoffrey. “Now, what do you suppose you’ll be next?”

“Don’t know,” said the old man, sharply; “but I’ve no doubt you’ll be a dog.”

“May I ask why?”

“Because you’re an impertinent puppy now!”

“Just as you like,” said Geoffrey, smiling. “But you look cross.”

“No, sir; things are not just as I like,” said the old man, seating himself upon Geoffrey’s table, but only to get off, go quickly to the door, open it softly, and then dash out—to come back disappointed, for there was no one listening. “Look here, Trethick, I want to ask you a plain question.”

“Go on, then.”

“That niece of mine goes out a great deal now—has gone out a great deal since you’ve been here. Is it to meet you?”

Geoffrey had hard work to sit unmoved, for he thought of what he knew, and wondered whether he ought to speak out: and he felt that the old man was watching him searchingly.

“No!” said Geoffrey, shortly. “It is not!”

“That’s right, I’m glad of it,” said the old man, taking a chair, and apparently more at his ease. “She’ll be a cat one of these days, hang her! But look here, boy. Don’t you look at her. The jade’s ready to lead on everybody she sees. If I were not her uncle, I believe she’d set her cap at me. Now, look here: I told you at first, and I tell you again, I’ll have no fooling.”

“Give me one of those cigars of yours,” said Geoffrey, rather bluntly, and apparently without paying any heed to the old man’s words. “I want a smoke.”

“Humph! Things are going crooked with you, then, are they?”

“Very!” said Geoffrey. “But come out to the summer-house, and let’s feel the free air.”

“Here, catch hold!” cried the old man, holding out a black cheroot. “That’s the only good trait in your character, boy, you do know a good cigar. He, he, he! You should try some I keep for Rumsey, and fellows like that.”

“Thanks, no,” said Geoffrey.

“Ah! I told you how it would be,” continued the old man, as they entered the look-out and took their seats. “I told you how it would be. I knew it well enough. So I did.”

They sat looking at each other for a few moments.

“You can’t get an engagement then, my lad, eh?”

“No,” said Geoffrey, lighting up; “not yet.”

“No; nor you won’t. That you won’t,” chuckled the old man, as Geoffrey sat himself on the summer-house table, and, thrusting his hands in his pockets, began swinging one leg backwards and forwards.

“I’ve tried at twenty mines in the month I’ve been here,” said Geoffrey, “and pointed out ways of saving that would pay me a good salary ten times over, and put money in the proprietors’ or shareholders’ pockets.”

“Yes, and they laugh at you, don’t they?”

“Confoundedly,” said Geoffrey.

“Keep that leg still,” said the old man, poking at the swinging member with his cane.

Geoffrey gave the cane a kick, and sent it flying out on to the grass-plot, making Uncle Paul turn white with rage; but the young man got leisurely down and picked it up, retaining it in his hand as he reseated himself, and began making passes with it at a knot in the wood.

“Give me my cane,” said the old man, angrily.

“They’re as blind as moles to their own interests,” said Geoffrey.

“Do you hear? Give me my cane.”

“And treat all my advances as if I were trying to trick and defraud them.”

“I say, give me my cane!” cried the old man.

“They flatly tell me that my plans are new-fangled and foolish, and that they’ll have none of them.”

“Confound you, you insolent puppy! Will you give me my cane?”

“They’re as hard to move as so many mules,” said Geoffrey, handing the cane, and smiling in the old man’s face.

Uncle Paul snatched the cane, and made a threatening gesture as if about to strike, when Geoffrey held out one hand, school-boy fashion, for a cut on the palm, and the old man made as if to give it a vicious blow; but, as the other did not flinch, he checked the fall of the cane, and sat showing his yellow teeth.

“I’m glad of it, very glad,” he snarled. “I told you so; and now you may pack up and be off, for I’m sick of you, and want to see your back.”

“But I’m not going,” said Geoffrey, coolly. “I wouldn’t move for the world. You do me so much good.”

“I do you good, puppy?”

“To be sure you do. I get as bilious and acid, and put out with my ill-luck as can be, and then I come and take a dose of you, and it seems to put me right again.”

“You’re—you’re the most insolent, cool, impertinent puppy I ever met?” cried the old man; “and—and I wish you all the ill-luck you can get.”

“Thanky,” said Geoffrey. “Well, good-by for the present. I’m going to take a walk down to the Cove.”

“Of course,” snarled Uncle Paul. “Hi! here. Madge! Madge!”

“Yes, uncle,” she cried, running eagerly out of the porch, and across the grass-plot.

“Yes, uncle,” he snarled. “You jade. You were listening, and waiting for a chance for another look, or a word, with this puppy here.”

“Oh, uncle!” cried the girl, colouring up, for the old man had guessed the truth.

“Pray don’t protest, my dear Miss Mullion,” said Geoffrey, coolly. “Say you were. There’s no harm in it.”

“Harm in it?” cried the old man, fiercely, “harm? Why, you don’t suppose I’m going to let you, a mining adventurer, flirt and play tricks with my brother’s child, and then go off and never come back?”

“Youth is the time for folly, Mr Paul.”

“Yes; but there shall be no follies here, sir. Look here, Madge, this fellow’s not to be trusted. He’s always going over to the Cove, to make eyes at handsome Bess Prawle; so don’t you listen to him.”

Madge looked at Geoffrey inquiringly.

“It’s quite true, Miss Mullion,” said Geoffrey, bowing assent to the old man’s words, “I am going over to the Cove; and I dare say I shall see Miss Prawle the pretty. By the way, Mr Paul, are women any the better for being pretty?”

“You—you impudent jackanapes! You, you—There, ha, ha, ha! Look at her!” he cried, chuckling at the effect of his words. “She’s run indoors in a huff, and she’ll cry as soon as you’re gone.”

“Then I hope you feel happy, sir?”

“I do,” said the old man, rubbing the ivory top of his cane. “Look here, boy, do you mean any thing by being so civil to that girl?”

“What girl, sir?”

“Don’t aggravate me, boy. Her—Madge—that smooth-faced, good-looking cat.”

“I don’t mean any thing but to be civil.”

“Not marriage?”

“Well, seeing that I can barely keep myself,” said Geoffrey, laughing, “no.”

“Marry Miss Pavey, then,” chuckled the old man, maliciously. “Sweet creature. False teeth, false hair, false ways, false voice—falsetto. Lovely woman. See what a dresser she is. What a useful piece of furniture for a house.”

“Marry her yourself,” said Geoffrey; “you are an old bachelor.”

“Bah!” exclaimed the old man. “But look here, sir. My niece!”

“Still harping on my daughter.”

“No, I’m not, Polonius Junior; but upon my niece. You say she don’t go out to meet you.”

“No, she does not.”

“Then don’t be civil to her. Marriage is folly. My brother married Jane Mullion there, and she worried his life out with being so stupid, and then he died and left her and her child paupers.”

“Hang that word!” cried Geoffrey, warmly. “How I do hate it.”

“Then don’t go and make a race of paupers,” said the old man. “Bah! A young fellow has his work cut out in life, and starts on his journey by sticking a load of woman on his back. Then she sticks a load of baby on her back, and most likely goes on banging children all over him till the burthen gets too heavy to be borne, when the poor wretch breaks down and dies. Look at me, sir. I never married; but saved enough to live on, and keep other people. Follow my example.”

“And grow as cantankerous.”

“Do you want to quarrel, puppy?”

“Not I. I haven’t time.”

“What are you crying about?” said the old man, roughly, as he found that Mrs Mullion, attracted by his loud voice, had come to see what was the matter, and had heard a part of his last speech.

“At what you said, dear,” sobbed the poor woman.

“Don’t you mind what he says, Mrs Mullion,” said Geoffrey; “he doesn’t mean it. I’ll be bound to say he’s got a very soft spot in his heart somewhere.”

As he spoke Geoffrey walked out of the garden, whistling, and made for the cliff path, drinking in the deliciously-fresh sea-breeze as he went along.

“This place keeps one from having the dumps,” he said to himself, “it is so fresh and bright; but really, in spite of my vainglorious boasting, I’m afraid I am wasting time here. Nil des, though; I’m not beaten yet. Old Paul is glorious as a dose of bitters, if he didn’t give one quite so much about Brown Maudlin. Pretty girl, very; but wants ballast horribly. Hang the old man, he goes just the way to make a fellow think about her. But he’s a fine old boy. Now I’ll go and have a dose of resignation from poor old Mrs Prawle.

“That old lady always does me good,” he said, as he went on. “What sane man could grumble who has all his faculties, just because he cannot make filthy lucre, when he has that patient old lady ready to face him with her calm, subdued ways. Hang it, there’s a very pathetic side to her life!”

He did not see that he, too, was watched, as he went swinging along; but went right ahead in his thorough way, setting his mind on a certain goal, and hardly heeding any thing else; but he had not passed one clump of rocks far, when Amos Pengelly came out, and stood watching him till he disappeared, and then followed slowly, to make sure that Geoffrey went down to the Cove.

The rough miner’s face was very white and drawn, and he uttered a low moaning sigh as he satisfied himself that the man whom he was watching had gone straight to the Cove, and then he limped back some little distance, and, with a heavy frown settling on his massive face, he seated himself on a rock waiting for Geoffrey’s return, his fingers crooking and clenching into fists, and the ruined mine shaft not far behind.

Chapter Seventeen.

At Gwennas Cove.

Bess Prawle was leaning against the rough granite door-post, very handsome, picturesque, and defiant, as she knitted away at a coarse blue worsted jersey which she was making; looking up from time to time to watch her father, who, pipe in mouth, was weeding the little patch of garden, of which he seemed to be very proud, while every now and then he paused to speak.

Just then the old man raised his nose and sniffed.

“There’s your mother burning again, Bess. Go and see,” he growled.

The girl ran in to find poor old Mrs Prawle evidently greatly exercised in her mind lest a jersey of her husband’s should be put on damp, and hence she was scorching it against the fire.

“Oh, mother!” cried Bess impatiently, “how you frighten me. Pray do take more care.”

“Yes, yes, Bess,” cried the poor woman querulously, as she turned and re-spread the article of clothing on her knees, “but some one must see to the things being aired;” and Bessie returned to where the old man was at work, when he stood up and drew his hand across his mouth.

“I don’t care, lass; I arn’t lived to sixty without finding that when a young fellow keeps coming to a cottage like this, it isn’t only to see an old woman who’s sick.”

“Stuff, father! you’re always thinking young men come to see me.”

“Am I?” grumbled the old man. “Well, I know what I know, and I know this—that if that London chap keeps coming here to see you, I’ll break his gashly head, or shove him over the cliff as I would have done to Jack Lannoe if Amos Pengelly hadn’t thrashed him instead.”

“Then I’ll tell him what you say, father—no, I won’t,” cried Bess, sharply, “I’ll tell mother what you promise to do.”

She made a movement as if to go in, when her father caught her by the skirt of her gown, and drew her back.

“I’ll never forgive you, Bess,” he said, in a hoarse whisper; “I’ll never forgive you if you do.”

“I will tell her,” cried the girl, looking angry and flushed, “unless you promise never to touch Mr Trethick.”

The old man held on to her and drew her farther away, so as to make sure that no words of their altercation should be heard inside the cottage.

“Look here, Bess,” he said hoarsely, “doesn’t he come to see you?”

“To see me?” said the girl, scornfully. “Isn’t he a gentleman, and arn’t I a witch, as the people say, and arn’t you the worst character in these parts?”

“So they say,” said the old man, grimly. “The fools!”

“Is it likely that a gentleman like him would come after me?”

“That Tregenna did,” said the old man, suspiciously.

“Yes, till you threatened to break his neck,” said Bess, laughing.

“And I’d have done it too,” said the old man, with his eyes lighting up fiercely; “and so I will to this one.”

“He don’t come to see me, father,” said Bess, quietly. “You watch him next time he’s here. He’s not the sort of man to care about women at all, and—hush, father! here he is.”

There was the sound of a heavy foot on the stones above, and Geoffrey Trethick came into sight, looking fresh and breeze-blown as he strode along.

“She knows his step,” muttered the old man, grinding his teeth, “and I won’t have it.”

He glanced at his daughter, and saw that her warm colour was a little heightened as Geoffrey came up with a hearty “Good-morning.”

“Why, Bess,” he cried, “you look as fresh as a rose. Ah, Father Prawle, how are you? Look here, I’ve brought you an ounce of prime tobacco,” and he held out the little roll to the old man.

Prawle took it, looking vindictively at him, and made as if to throw it over the cliff into the sea, but jerked it back at the giver’s feet.

“I don’t want your tobacco,” he said, roughly. “I could buy you and yours up a dozen times over if I liked.”

“You are precious poor if you can’t,” said Geoffrey, stooping and picking up the tobacco. “Well, if you won’t smoke it I will. But look here, Prawle, what’s the matter with you? What have I done to offend you?”

“I don’t like your coming here, and I won’t have it,” cried the old man.

“Do you want to frighten poor mother?” exclaimed Bess, hastily. “Don’t mind what he says, Mr Trethick,” she continued; “mother is so glad for you to come—it makes such a change; but father won’t believe you come on purpose to see her.”

“Then what does he suppose I come for?” said Geoffrey, sitting down on a rough bench by the path. “Does he—Oh! I see,” he said, laughing; “he thinks it’s to see you, Miss Bess. Why, Prawle, Prawle,” he continued, getting up and clapping the old man on the shoulder, “what a queer set of people you are down here!”

Bess changed colour a little as she heard the visitor’s half-contemptuous tone when he alluded to her, but she forced a smile, and spoke out firmly,—

“Yes, Mr Trethick, that’s what he thinks.”

“Then he was never more mistaken in his life,” cried Geoffrey. “Here, come and sit down, old man, and we’ll smoke a pipe together till mother wakes, and then I’ll buy some sweets and be off again; but I want a talk with you. Amos Pengelly says you know more about the mines here than most men.”

“Maybe I do, sir,” growled Prawle, surlily, and apparently only half convinced.

“Sit down then, man, and speak out honestly. What do you know about Wheal Carnac?”

“Wheal Carnac!” said the old man, starting. “What do I know about it? Nothing at all—nothing at all.”

“Fill your pipe. Sit down and light up.”

Prawle hesitated for a moment, and glanced at his daughter, then back at their visitor, and ended by sitting down on the bench and knocking the ashes from his pipe to refill it from the tobacco brought by his visitor; while Bess, in whose eyes the tears were gathering, turned away and softly peeped into the cottage.

“That’s better,” said Geoffrey, as both pipes were lit, and they sat under the grey and purple cliff facing the sparkling sea. “Amos Pengelly says he believes you have a good deal of faith in that mine.”

“Amos Pengelly’s a psalm-singing, chattering fool,” said the old man, angrily.

“No he isn’t,” said Geoffrey; “he’s a very good, honest, sensible fellow.”

Bess turned sharply round and looked curiously at him.

“Bah! what does he know ’bout what I think?” growled Prawle.

“I don’t know; but he tells me you worked in it.”

Prawle nodded.

“Well, you must have seen a good deal of what the rock is like.”

“Like rubbish,” said the old man, hastily. “Thousands have been wasted there, and thousands more will be by anybody who’s fool enough to work it.”

“Humph?” said Geoffrey, between two puffs of smoke, “perhaps so. Is that your honest opinion?”

As he spoke he gazed full in the old man’s eyes, which met his without flinching for a few moments, but only to sink before the searching gaze and take refuge on the ground.

“Never you mind what’s my honest opinion. I’m not an Amos Pengelly to go and chatter about my affairs.”

“A still tongue makes a wise head, Master Prawle,” said Geoffrey, “even about little smuggling and wrecking jobs.”

“What do you know about smuggling and wrecking?” cried Prawle, angrily.

“Very little,” said Geoffrey, “only this cove looks to me about as convenient a place as well could be for any little job of that sort.”

“Mother’s awake, Mr Trethick,” interposed Bess, as she saw her father’s wrath rising at Geoffrey’s bantering comment.

“I’ll come directly,” said Geoffrey, as he saw her appealing look. “There, I won’t joke you about your private affairs, Master Prawle. So you won’t tell me any thing about Wheal Carnac?”

“Not a word,” said the old man, angrily.

“Not this time,” said Geoffrey, rising, “but think it over. Now, Miss Bessie, how is our invalid to-day?”

Mrs Prawle’s face lit up as Geoffrey’s form darkened the door, and she held out her thin white hand eagerly, as, in his bluff way, her visitor asked after her health.

“Very sadly, sir, very sadly,” she said, turning a fresh article of attire and spreading it upon her knees; “but do you—do you want—I’m so glad to do a little to save being a burthen to them.”

“Want sweets?” said Geoffrey. “Yes, I’ve got a commission to spend a whole sixpence; and see here, Miss Bessie, above half are to be those transparent red gentlemen.”

He looked merrily in the girl’s face, little thinking of the pain he gave her, and how her woman’s vanity was touched by his utter indifference. She smiled back, however, filled a paper bag with what he required, and went out to resume her knitting by the door, while Geoffrey sat on chatting, and listening to the poor woman’s plaints.

“She’s such a good girl, my Bess,” she said, proudly, as her mother’s heart throbbed high at the thought of what a thing it would be if this well-spoken gentleman from London should take a fancy to her child, and raise her to his position.

“Yes, she seems to be,” said Geoffrey, little suspecting her thoughts.

“So patient and so good; and you will not heed what they say about us, sir?”

“Not I,” said Geoffrey.

“They say, you know, that she’s almost a wise woman; and they’ve been very bitter against us ever since Mrs Polwhyn’s cow died.”

“Indeed!”

“Oh yes,” said the poor woman, earnestly; “they say Bess ill-wished it, and that she has ill-wished Mrs Vorr’s boy, who is a cripple.”

“You are a curious set of people down here,” said Geoffrey; “but do you mean to tell me that they believe such things as that?”

“Indeed they do,” said the poor woman, with tears in her eyes.

“And about witches?”

“Oh yes,” she said, laying her hand on the big Bible by her side; “and, of course, that is true, sir. You know King Saul went to see the witch of Endor.”

“Yes,” said Geoffrey, dryly.

“But it is too bad about my poor Bess, who is such a good and patient girl, and waits upon me day and night. He’ll be a lucky man who wins her for a wife!”

“I’m sure he will,” said Geoffrey.

“Then they say such cruel things about Prawle, and call him wrecker and smuggler.”

“Well,” said Geoffrey, laughing, “I wouldn’t swear he has never helped the landing of any thing in the cove.”

“Don’t ask me, please sir,” said the old woman, looking terribly troubled; “but he is the best and truest of men, and, though he’s very rough, never a hard word has he said all these weary years that I have been nothing but a burthen and a care.”

“Oh, come, come!” said Geoffrey, taking her hand, as he saw the tears trickling down her furrowed face, “don’t talk like that; there’s always a pleasure in doing things for those we love. Hallo! who’s this?” he cried, starting up as the doorway was shadowed, “Miss Penwynn!”

“Mr Trethick!” cried Rhoda, flushing slightly, “you here?”

“Yes,” he said, laughing frankly, as he shook hands, “I’ve come to buy some sweets. Mrs Prawle’s an old friend of mine. Let me recommend the transparent red fellows, with acid in them,” he continued, merrily. “Miss Bessie, here’s a fresh customer.”

Rhoda laughed and looked pleased at the way in which he kept up the pleasant fiction, as he immediately resigned his seat in her favour, and after a few cheery words about the weather and the like, he bade the invalid good-by, asked after. Mr Penwynn, and left the cottage.

“He’s a brave, good young man, my dear,” said Mrs Prawle, wiping her eyes, “and he often comes over and spends a sixpence here.”

“Does he?” said Rhoda, quietly.

“Yes, very often; but Prawle don’t like it, though I can’t see why, my dear, for no young man could be nicer; and if he has took a fancy to our Bess, and should marry her, it would be the happiest day of my life.”

“But—do you think—”

“Well, I don’t know,” said the invalid, glad of an opportunity to prattle on; “she’s a good and a handsome girl, as she showed in the way she sent that Mr Tregenna about his business, and it was a merciful thing that Prawle never did him a mischief; he’s that violent, and Mr Tregenna was always hanging about to see our Bess.”

“Yes, yes,” said Rhoda, colouring, “I know about that;” and then, her woman’s curiosity prevailing over her dislike to hear gossip, she continued, “but you don’t think Mr Trethick comes to—”

“See our Bess, my dear? Well, I can’t say. He’s quite a gentleman, and I’m sure if he does he means honourable to her.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Rhoda, hastily, “but he is quite a stranger.”

“Yes, my dear, and it may be all my fancy; but gentlemen do sometimes marry poor girls—not that my Bess is poor, or will be poor,” she said, proudly. “There’s many a farmer’s or captain’s daughter will be worse off than she.”

“But I thought,” exclaimed Rhoda, “that Bess had a sweetheart—that lame man, Pengelly?”

“No,” said the invalid, “I don’t think that’s any thing. He’s a good young man—so religious, and sings and prays beautifully. He prayed here by me one Sunday for a whole hour; but it is not nature that my Bess should care for the likes of him, even if he does worship the ground she walks upon.”

The old woman prattled away, but Rhoda did not hear her, for somehow her mind was busy running on with Geoffrey Trethick’s career, and she was thinking how strange it would be if he married the old smuggler’s handsome daughter, who, it was reputed, would have plenty of money when her father died, but was to be avoided on account of the possession of the evil eye.

At last the visit was brought to an end, Rhoda promising, somewhat unwillingly, to come soon again; when Bess was summoned to come in, with her fearless erect carriage, to do up the parcel of sweets that the visitor purchased.

As they were taken, the eyes of the two girls met, each gazing searchingly at the other, and to Rhoda it seemed that there was a calm, triumphant smile on the face of Bess, who almost looked at her mockingly, though there was a bitterness in the curl of her lip.

Somehow Rhoda grew very thoughtful as she slowly made her way back. Geoffrey Trethick was nothing to her, but he had been their guest, and it seemed to be almost an insult that he should know them, and yet stoop to the pursuit of this common peasant girl.

“But why should I trouble about it?” she said, merrily; and all thought of what had been said was chased away upon her seeing the object of her thoughts upon the cliff track, in company with the Reverend Edward Lee.

Meanwhile Bess Prawle had gone out, knitting in hand, to where her father was busy in his garden, and stood beside him for some time in silence, till he looked and saw her gazing at him, with a settled frown upon her face.

“Well, father,” she said rather huskily.

“Well, lass.”

“Do you think now that Mr Trethick comes over to see poor me?”

Chapter Eighteen.

Meeting a Volcano—and a Placid Lake.

Geoffrey came swinging along the path, with his head thrown back and his chest forward, smiling at something that crossed his mind, when he stopped short, for Amos Pengelly suddenly stood in his way.

“Ah, Pengelly,” he said, heartily, “how are you, my lad?” and he stretched out his hand.

To his astonishment, the miner struck it savagely aside, closed with him, caught him by arm and waistband, and by a clever Cornish wrestling trick, and the exercise of his iron muscles, literally lifted him from the ground.

Geoffrey was powerful, and full of youth and vigour, but his antagonist’s dwarfish legs gave him another advantage, and he could have thrown the young man heavily to the ground, but in the very act of dashing him upon the rocks he relented, and let him recover himself.

“Have you gone mad, Pengelly?” cried Geoffrey, warmly. “Hang it, man, if you don’t control that confounded temper of yours you’ll be on your trial some day for murder.”

“Maybe it’ll be yours,” cried Amos, fiercely. “What have I done to you that you should serve me in this way?”

“I? Serve you?” cried Geoffrey, in astonishment, for he had resumed his unruffled manner. “What’s the matter, Amos?”

“Where have you been, master?”

“Been? Down to Gwennas Cove.”

“There, you own it,” cried Amos, with his passion rising again.

“Look here, master, there are things that make me mad. I’ve fought like men with beasts at Ephesus, as holy Paul says, and my beasts are the beasts of passion that rise up in me. I’ve fought and I’ve prayed, and I’ve mastered them again and again, but there’s one thing lets them loose, and I can’t keep them down.”

“Look here, Pengelly,” said Geoffrey, quietly, “I had hoped when the day came that I could get a good engagement to have you as one of my best men; but, hang me! if I can trust a fellow who has always got a volcano in him ready to burst out.”

“Then why do you cross me like this?”

“Cross you, my good fellow?” said Geoffrey, as he fixed the miner with his eye. “I’m not going to cross you. There, come along back to Carnac, and let’s talk about yonder mine.”

“I want no dealings with such a treacherous man,” cried Amos, fiercely. “But, look here, I warn ye. You’re well-shaped and good to look upon, while I’m only a cripple; but I can’t—there’s that in me that won’t let me—stand by and see another man take up with her as flouts me for what I am.”

“Flouts? Take up with her?” said Geoffrey, wonderingly, while the miner’s breast heaved as he seemed to be battling hard to contain himself.

Then a light burst upon Geoffrey, and he was ready to burst into a fit of laughter; but he saw that the subject was too serious for mirth, and he exclaimed, in a tone of vexation once more,—

“Are all you people mad here upon questions relating to the sexes? Why, my good fellow, where do you think I’ve been?”

“You said—to Prawle’s.”

“Yes, of course; but what for?”

“You’ve been to see her. You’ve been again and again, master, till I can bear it no more. Oh! Master Trethick,” he cried, piteously, “it may be play and trifling with you, but it’s killing me.”

“Amos Pengelly,” cried Geoffrey, laying his hand on the miner’s shoulder, “if you think I go over yonder to see Prawle’s daughter you, never made a greater mistake in your life.”

Amos drew back and looked full in his eyes, which never flinched for a moment, but frankly returned the gaze.

“Say that again,” said the miner, hoarsely.

“I won’t,” cried Geoffrey. “Hang it, man! there are bounds to every thing. It’s absurd, it’s—”

He stopped short as he saw the man’s emotion, and said kindly, as he held out his hand,—

“Pengelly, my lad, as I am a man, I never bestowed a thought on Bessie Prawle, but have been there to sit half-an-hour with her poor sick mother.”

The miner’s face changed, and he was about to speak, but he turned sharply round, and limped away with wonderful activity, disappearing amongst the rocks; and, after waiting a few minutes to see if he would return, Geoffrey gave himself a shake, and then stooped to pick up something that fell tinkling on the granite path.

“That’s one of my brace buttons gone,” he said pettishly. “Hang the fellow! he’s as strong as a horse. It was enough to break all one’s buttons. So that’s Cornish wrestling, is it? I thought myself pretty clever, but he could have thrown me like a baby.”

“Poor fellow, though,” he said to himself, as he went on, “I suppose he did feel cut up and savage with me. But what a set they are—down here, to be sure. Seems to me that they think of nothing but love-making, and that it isn’t safe to look at a woman in the place. What a blessing it is that I am so constituted that all women seem to me to be mothers and sisters—mothers and sisters—sisters—yes, sisters,” he mused, as he looked at his right hand, opening and closing the fingers gently, as he seemed to feel within it a soft, shapely white hand, and traced each tapering finger where Rhoda’s had so lately been.

“She would have been a very sweet sister to a man. Full of firmness, and ready to advise and help a fellow in his troubles. It must be very nice to have a sister—such a one as she.”

He walked on very slowly, growing moment by moment more thoughtful, and somehow his thoughts were of Rhoda Penwynn; but they were all chased away by the sight of the Reverend Edward Lee coming along the track.

“Ah, Mr Lee!” he cried, holding out his hand, “how are you getting along?”

The young clergyman started and looked confused. There was a shrinking manner about him as he unwillingly put out his hand to be heartily pressed; but somehow Geoffrey Trethick’s will seemed always to master his, and he replied nervously to his inquiries.

“I’ve been going to call upon you over and over again,” said Geoffrey. “Coming for advice, and that sort of thing; but I suppose you are terribly busy over your new cure?”

“I am—very busy,” said the other, with a half sigh, as he recalled some of the difficulties of his task; and he looked nervously in Geoffrey’s eyes, and felt constrained to say that he would be very glad to see him.

“That’s right,” said Geoffrey, “I shall come. One has not too many cultivated acquaintances down here. And I’m a parishioner, you know.”

The Reverend Edward Lee grew bolder for this suggested duty.

“And I have not called upon you,” he said. “I have been remiss.”

“Ah, well, you’ll make up for that,” said Geoffrey.

“Is—is that why I have not seen you at church?” he said.

“Oh, no!” said Geoffrey. “That’s because I have been remiss and—ah, here’s Miss Penwynn.”

His companion started, and a slight colour came into his pale cheeks as Rhoda came round one of the rocky buttresses of the cliff, and, in spite of himself, as his keen eyes detected the change, Geoffrey felt a suspicion coming upon him that the Reverend Edward Lee had had some idea that Rhoda was walking in this direction, and had turned his steps that way so as to meet her.

“Why, she’s blushing, too!” said Geoffrey to himself, as Rhoda came up and shook hands with Mr Lee.

“I need not shake hands with you again, Mr Trethick,” she said. “By the way, it is very kind of you to call and talk to that poor Mrs Prawle.”

The vicar darted a quick glance from one to the other, and then, without making any pretence of going further, he turned round, and walked back beside Rhoda towards Carnac, Geoffrey coming behind, for the path did not admit of three abreast. The consequence was that he only came in for a stray word here and there, and told himself that being the third party he was de trop.

All the same, though, he found himself taking note of Rhoda’s figure, the carriage of her head, and her free, firm step on the rugged path. This path seemed to trouble the young vicar, who, being short-sighted, more than once caught the toes of his thin boots against some irregularity in the granite, as he talked on in his smooth, easy-flowing way, only interrupted by Rhoda turning her head occasionally to point out some place of interest in the distance.

“Parson’s like the rest!” said Geoffrey to himself, as he turned off to the cottage. “He’s touched. I wonder whether she knew that he was coming to meet her, for that he went on purpose, I’ll swear. I wonder whether any thing could be made of Wheal Carnac? What a nice sister she would make! Hallo! Pengelly, you here again? No, no; stand off, my lad: I’ve no more brace buttons to spare. One of your hugs is enough for a day. What?”

“I beg your pardon, Master Trethick,” said the miner, humbly; and he stood with his hat off in the track, “I beg your pardon humbly, sir; I do indeed.”

“Oh, tut—tut, man, that’s all past,” said Geoffrey, heartily.

“No, sir, it arn’t,” said Amos. “I feel that shamed o’ myself that I haven’t got words to speak it. Only please say that you forgive me, and won’t think of it any more.”

“Forgive you! Yes, Pengelly, of course; but next time you suspect one of any thing wrong, just bark out aloud before you bite, will you?—it will give a fellow a chance to get out of your way.”

“Ah, sir, you don’t know how foolish I feel.”

“Do you? Then don’t feel so any more. And now look here, my lad, I want to have a few words with you again about Wheal Carnac.”

“Yes, sir—when?”

“Oh, soon—say to-morrow morning. I’ll meet you there at your own time.”

“Say six, sir. I’m not on at the mine till nine,” said Amos, with his face lighting up; and they parted, for Geoffrey to become aware, as he entered the gate, that Madge Mullion was at the window ready to smile at him as he went in, and a shrewd suspicion smote him that she had been watching for his return.

Chapter Nineteen.

At Wheal Carnac.

“I’ve got Wheal Carnac on the brain,” said Geoffrey, as he leaped out of his bed soon after five o’clock, made a great deal of noise and splashing over a tub, and ended by standing up fresh, healthy, and dressed, and calling himself a fool. “Why, I might have taken a towel and had a dip in the sparkling waters,” he said, as he gazed out, to see the ripples stained with blood-red and gold, orange and brilliant topaz with the rising sun. “Why, it would have been a bath in Falernian wine! Never mind—live and learn.”

“By George, what was I dreaming? Oh! I remember: that I fell down the old pit-shaft and went on falling into infinite space, with some one like that Tregenna laughing at me the while.”

He went softly out of his room and down-stairs, so as not to disturb the other occupants of the house, to find, to his surprise, that the door was open; and, on stepping out into the garden, he came suddenly upon Madge, looking very bright and rosy, with her rich auburn hair taking a fresh tinge from the early morning beams.

“Ah, Miss Mullion! Good-morning. You up so soon?”

“Yes,” she said eagerly, “I often go out for an early walk down to the sea.”

“Not to play at mermaid, and sport in the briny wave!” he asked laughingly.

“Oh, dear, no!” she cried with a shiver, “I’m so afraid of the water.”

“Are you?” he said, smiling. “Well, it would be a job to get all that pretty hair dry again.”

Madge coloured with pleasure.

“It is so nice walking over the rocks quite early,” she said.

“Yes, I suppose so. Well, I must be off.”

“Are you going for a walk?” she said naïvely.

“Yes, but only on my way to work. Good-by for the present. I say, Miss Mullion, a nice bit of brown fish for breakfast, please. I shall be as hungry as a hunter when I come back.”

He walked sharply off, not seeing that uncle Paul’s blind stirred slightly, and Madge stood gazing after him.

“He’s as cold as a stone,” said the girl, petulantly. “I declare I hate him—that I do. But I’ll pique him yet, see if I don’t, clever as he is. He’ll be sorry for this some day. A great, ugly, stupid thing!”

The tears of vexation stood in her eyes, but they disappeared almost directly.

“He did say it was pretty hair,” she said, with her face lighting up, “and if I don’t make some one jealous yet it’s strange to me.”

She hesitated for a few moments as to whether she should take the same path as Geoffrey, and ended by flinging herself petulantly round and entering the house.

“It’s a glorious morning,” said Geoffrey, as he went down the steep, stone-paved pathway, drinking in the fresh salt-breeze. “I declare, it’s like living a new life here,” and his chest seemed to expand, and his muscles and nerves grow tense, as the life-blood bounded through his veins.

At times he felt as if he would like to rush off and run, like a school-boy, from the full tide of vitality that made his veins throb; but he went on soberly enough, exchanging a nod with different fishermen at their cottage doors, for most of them had come to know him now, and showed their white teeth in a friendly smile as he swung along.

He glanced at his watch as he neared the slope up which the mine chimney crawled, like a huge serpent, to the perpendicular shaft on the hill, and found he was an hour before his time; so walking sharply down to a little sandy stretch only bare at very low tides, he slipped off his boots, tied the laces together, and hung them over his shoulder, and then drew off his socks, which he thrust into his pocket, turned up his trousers, and had a good wade; after which, being without a towel, he began to walk along the dry sand so as to let sun and air perform the part of bath attendants, finally taking a seat upon a stone to put the final polish to his toes with a silk pocket-handkerchief.

He was bending down, seriously intent upon a few stray particles of sand, when a shadow fell athwart him, and looking up sharply, there stood Rhoda Penwynn.

“Oh! I beg your pardon, Mr Trethick,” she cried, colouring.

“Beg yours,” he said bluntly, as he started up and held out his hand; for it struck him that under the circumstances the better plan was to ignore his pursuit.

“It’s only a matter of custom,” he said to himself; “bare feet are no more indelicate than bare hands or bare shoulders, and if ever she goes to sea she won’t see many sailors wear socks and shoes.”

So in the coolest manner possible he walked by Rhoda’s side, as calmly as a barefooted friar of old, and as free from guile; while she felt half-annoyed, half ready to blush, and ended by smiling at her companion’s matter-of-fact ways. For he chatted about the place, the contents of the rock-pools, and the various weeds, and ended in the bluntest way by holding out his hand.

“Good-morning, Miss Penwynn, I have an appointment now. Let me say good-by though, with a compliment.”

“Please don’t,” said Rhoda.

“But I will,” he said, laughing, “I only wanted to say that I admire your early rising ways.”

Then nodding in his frank, cheery way, he started off back towards the ruined mine, walking quickly till the acorn barnacles upon the rocks suggested the advisability of putting on his socks and boots, which he rapidly did.

“What a Goth she must have thought me!” he said, laughing. “Well, can’t help it if she did.”

Then starting off once more, he turned a corner and could see a short, thick-set figure advancing, and waved his hand, to see a cap held up in return.

“Morning, Pengelly,” he cried, as he met the miner. “Did you bring a pick?”

“No, sir, it looked too business-like,” said Pengelly, “and I thought we’d keep the matter quiet. But is that all over, sir?”

“What?” said Geoffrey.

“That last night work, sir. I haven’t slep’ a wink for thinking of it.”

“Tut, man! I never thought of it again. But, as you have spoken, just look here, Pengelly; you people down here seem to be all mad about marriage.”

“Well, I don’t know about mad, sir,” said the miner, apologetically; “but folks do think a deal about coming together.”

“So it seems,” said Geoffrey, grimly.

“Comes natural like, sir,” said Amos, in a quiet, innocent way; “I think it no shame to say I think a deal of Bessie Prawle, and that’s what made me so mad last night.”

“Well, I suppose it was natural, Pengelly. But hang it, man, you must keep that devil of a temper of yours chained.”

“I do, sir; I do,” said the miner, piteously. “I fight with it hard; but you, a fine straight man, don’t know what it is to love a handsome girl like my Bessie, and to feel that you are misshapen and unsightly in her eyes.”

“Well, but they say pretty girls like ugly men, Pengelly,” said Geoffrey, smiling.

“Foolish people say many foolish things, sir,” said the miner. “I can’t believe all that. She’s a handsome girl, and she’s as good as she’s handsome, and waits upon her mother hand and foot. I wish I could bring her though to a better way, for they don’t do as they should; and old Prawle makes a mock at all religious talk. Then people say Bess is a witch, and can ill-wish people, and it worries me, sir, knowing as I do how good she is at heart.”

“Well, never mind, Pengelly,” said Geoffrey, cheerily. “Some day, perhaps, Miss Bessie yonder will find out that you are like one of the sea-shells, rough outside but bright and soft within. Eh? But come along, let’s see if we can’t find out something worth our while. I want to get a good mine going, my lad.”

“And so do I, sir,” cried the miner. “I want to save money now; and—and—”

“Well, what?”

“You don’t think it foolish of me to talk, sir, as I have?”

“Not I, my lad.”

“It was all owing to that upset last night, sir.”

“Which we will both forget,” replied Geoffrey, “for I’ve got work on hand that I mean to do, and have no time for such nonsense. Now then, how are we to examine these stones without a pick?”

Amos Pengelly smiled, and opened his waistcoat, to show, stuck in his trousers’ waistband, the head of a miner’s hammer, and a crowbar with a piece of wood, tied in the form of a cross, to keep it from slipping down his leg.

“That’s capital,” cried Geoffrey. “Give me the hammer; you take the bar. First of all let’s have a look at the shaft.”

There seemed to be nothing to see but darkness, but Geoffrey gazed long and earnestly down its rocky sides, and as he let a stone fall down to get an approximate idea of its depth he felt a strange shudder run through him, as he thought of what a man’s chance would be did some enemy throw him down.

“Ugly place!” he said, as he saw Pengelly watching him.

“I never think of that, sir,” was the reply.

A glance round at the buildings sufficed, and then the miner led him to the bottom of a slope where hundreds of loads had been thrown down as the débris was dug out of the shaft, and, patiently clearing off the grass that had sprung up, Pengelly kept handing up pieces of rock for Geoffrey to break and examine.

“Yes,” said Geoffrey, as he inspected scrap after scrap, even examining the fractures with a magnifying glass, “yes, that’s paying stuff, Pengelly.”

“Iss, sir, isn’t it?” cried the miner, eagerly.

“Paying, but poor.”

“But it would be richer lower down, and we should hit the six-foot lode by driving.”

“May be,” said Geoffrey. “Humph, mundic! There’s copper here too,” he said, examining a piece of stone that glistened with the yellowish metal.

“That there be,” cried Pengelly; “I’m sure Wheal Carnac would pay, sir; I always believed it; and old Prawle there at the Cove, though he’s close, he knows it’s a good pit.”

“Yes,” said Geoffrey, “I believe it would pay, well worked, and on economical and scientific principles.”

“Pay, sir? Yes, I’m sure she would,” cried Pengelly. “You look here, sir, and here, at the stuff.”

He plied his crowbar most energetically, and Geoffrey worked hard, too, breaking fragment after fragment, and convincing himself that, though under the old plans it would not have paid to powder, wash, and extract the tin from the quality of ore lying thrown out from the mouth of the pit; yet under the system he hoped to introduce he felt sure that he could make a modest return.

“And there’s such a chance, sir,” cried Amos, with whom the working of Wheal Carnac was a pet project. “Look at the money laid out, and how well every thing was done.”

“What became of the machinery?” cried Geoffrey, abruptly.

“It was sold by auction, sir; all beautiful, fine new engines, and boilers, and wheels, and chains—not old-fashioned ones, but new casts, and they bought it at Tulip Hobba.”

“Where they work with it?”

“No, sir, it’s stopped; and they do say as it could all be bought back for very little.”

“Your very littles all mean thousands of pounds, Master Pengelly,” said Geoffrey, thoughtfully.

“But they’d all come back, sir, and you’d have the machinery still. Do buy it, sir, and get her to work once more.”

“Why, you don’t suppose I’ve got the money to invest?” cried Geoffrey.

“Haven’t you, sir?” said Pengelly, in a disappointed tone.

“Not a penny, my man.”

“Never mind, sir; you get them as has, and we’ll turn out such an output of tin to grass as’ll make some of the clever ones shake their heads.”

“More copper,” said Geoffrey, picking up a piece of stone.

“Yes, sir, a bit by chance; but I don’t think there’s much. This pit was sunk for tin.”

“Copper pays better than tin,” said Geoffrey, as he went on from spot to spot. “You don’t think any of this stuff was brought here from anywhere else?”

“Oh, dear, no, sir.”

“Not thrown down to make the pit seem more valuable than it is? Such tricks have been played.”

“Oh, no, sir. Besides, I wouldn’t begin till she’d been pumped out, and some more stuff got up to try her.”

“No,” said Geoffrey, “of course not;” and he went on with his examination, finding nothing to cause him great elation, but enough to make him soberly sensible that there was a modest career of success for the mine, if properly worked.

Who was to find the money, and give him the charge?

That was the problem he had to solve, and as he returned the hammer to Pengelly, and walked slowly back, he wondered whether he should be fortunate enough to find any one with a sufficiency of the speculative element in him to venture.

He was so deep in thought that he nearly ran up against Rhoda Penwynn, returning from her early walk, and in conversation with the Reverend Edward Lee, evidently also on a constitutional bout.

Rhoda gave him a smile and a salute, and the young vicar raised his hat stiffly; but Geoffrey’s head was too full of tin ore, pounds per ton, cost of crushing and smelting, to give them more than a passing thought; and he was only aroused from his reverie by a peculiar odour at Mrs Mullion’s door, where that dame stood, buxom, pleasant, and smiling, to hope he had had a nice walk, and tell him that breakfast was quite ready, and Uncle Paul already having his.

Chapter Twenty.

Geoffrey is Foolish.

Time glided on, and Geoffrey had very little to encourage him. He investigated Wheal Carnac a little more, and then stopped because he could go no farther. He found life, however, very pleasant at the far western home. He was invited to several houses; and played whist so well that he became a favourite, especially as he generally held bad cards. Then he sat a good deal with old Mr Paul, and bantered him when he was cross; while with Mrs Mullion he became an especial favourite, the pleasant, patient, innocent little body delighting in going to his room to tell him of her troubles, and about what a good man brother Thomas was, though she did wish she would be more patient.

“He gets more impatient as he grows older,” she sighed; “and if his paper isn’t on the table it’s dreadful. You see, Madge is so fond of getting it to read down the list of marriages, while, when her uncle has it, the first thing he does is to look and see if any one he knows is dead. I always peep to see if any one I know is born.”

Poor Mrs Mullion used to blunder on in the most innocent way possible, to her half-brother’s great delight, while Geoffrey had hard work sometimes to refrain from a smile.

The young man’s life was one of disappointment, but it was not unhappy; and more than once he found himself thinking of what it would have been had he had a sister, and that sister had been like Rhoda Penwynn. Then came thoughts of Madge Mullion, who seemed to be developing more and more a desire to enlist him in her train of admirers. Rumour said that she was fond of flirting, and her uncle angrily endorsed it. Now Geoffrey began to think of it, he recalled the fact that he received many little attentions at the girl’s hands such as an ordinary lodger would not get. Fresh flowers were always upon his table, both in sitting and bed room; books were left in conspicuous places, with markers in tender passages; he had caught Madge several times busy with needle and thread over some one or other of his articles of attire that needed the proverbial stitch in time; and one night, as he lay in bed thinking, he suddenly recalled the fact that he had said in her hearing that if there was any colour in the universe that he liked, it was blue.

“And, by George! she has worn blue ever since. The girl’s a regular man-trap, and old Paul’s right.”

“Well,” he said, getting up, and giving his pillow a vicious punch, as he lay thinking of her more than usual, “she may go on till all’s blue, for I sha’n’t put my foot in the trap. Why, confound her impudence! she’s carrying on with that smooth-looking fellow Tregenna, or else my ears deceived me, and—bother the wench! she’s very pretty, and piquante, and attractive, and all that sort of thing, and I wish she was at the bottom of the sea—a mermaid combing her golden hair—not drowned. Stupid wench!”

He then turned over, and mentally went down Horton Friendship mine, discussed to himself the losses that the slovenly manner of carrying on the work must entail to the proprietary; and then absolutely writhed over the contemptuous indifference his proposals received from those whom he looked upon as common-sense people.

“Hang them!” he growled. “The old cry. What did for our great-grandfathers will do for us. The farther you go back, the wiser people were; so that if you will only go far enough into antiquity there you find perfection.

“Now take my case,” he said. “I don’t propose any extraordinary new invention that shall take men’s breath away. I merely say you are getting your ores in a costly, wasteful manner. That you are digging out of the ground vast quantities of mundic and throwing it away. Well, I say to them that mundic is pyrites, and contains so much sulphur; that, by a process, I can utilise that, so as to supply sulphur as a heat producer, to the great saving of fuel, besides which, I can give you metallic results as well, and make a large profit.

“Result: they shake their heads and laugh at me.”

“Hang them! They’re as obstinate as—as—well, as I am, for give up I will not.”

Then, in a half-dreamy manner, he mentally went to the edge of the shaft at Wheal Carnac, and, as he had often done in reality, he picked up and examined the débris, lying where it had been thrown when the shaft was dug, and ended by going to sleep after half determining to try and get some apparatus fitted to allow of a descent, as far as he could go for the water, to examine the shaft and the adits, when if he could conscientiously feel that there was any prospect of the place being profitably worked he would make an effort to get a few enterprising capitalists together to take advantage of what was already done, and carry the mine on to prosperity.

The first person on whom Geoffrey’s eyes rested the next morning as he entered his room was Madge Mullion, in a neat blue gingham dress, arranging a bunch of forget-me-nots in a little blue vase upon his breakfast-table, and ready to look very bright and conscious, as she started up to smile pleasantly in his face.

“Why, hang the girl! she has blue eyes, too,” thought Geoffrey, as he nodded, by way of good-morning.

“Uncle Paul down?” he said.

“Yes, Mr Trethick, I heard him come down just before you, and—”

“The old rascal’s got something good for breakfast,” cried Geoffrey, with a pronounced sniff. “What is it?”

“Curried lobster, Mr Trethick,” said Madge, pouting her pretty red—perhaps already too pouting—lips at the lodger’s extremely mundane views.

“I love turned lobster,” said Geoffrey, “especially such lobsters as you get down here. I shall go and attack him for a portion.”

“Don’t, please, Mr Trethick,” said Madge, earnestly. “There is a delicious sole for you. It came from the trawler this morning, and—and I cooked it myself.”

“Egged and crumbed; Miss Mullion?”

“Yes,” she said, eagerly.

“Humph! Well, I think I’ll compound for the fresh sole, and let Uncle Paul have his lobster in peace.”

“You shall have it directly, Mr Trethick,” cried Madge, looking brightly in the young man’s face. “I—I brought you some forget-me-nots this morning.”

“Yes,” he said, smiling, “I was admiring them. They are beautiful; just like your eyes.”

“For shame! Mr Trethick; what nonsense!”

“No,” he said, “it’s a fact, and you’ve got the downiest of cheeks, and the reddest of lips that pout up at one as if asking to be kissed; and really, Madge, if they ask like that I shall be obliged to kiss them.”

“I’d never forgive you if you did,” said Madge, with a look that bade him go on.

“Well, I’m afraid I must chance the forgiveness,” he said, merrily. “It’s a great risk, but you may be merciful,” and he playfully caught her in his arms and kissed her, Madge making a pretence at resistance as she triumphantly told herself that she knew she could pique him and master his coldness.

“Oh! Mr Trethick!” she exclaimed.

“Madge! Here, I say, Madge!” cried the old man, whose door was heard to open sharply.

“Yes, uncle,” cried the girl, reddening.

“Oh, you’re there, are you,” he said, stumping across the little passage. “What are you doing there, madam?”

“Defending your curried lobster, most bravely, old gentleman,” said Geoffrey, coming to the rescue, but asking himself how he could have been such an ass, and whether he had not caught the complaint so prevalent in Carnac.

“How the devil did you know I had got curried lobster?” cried the old man.

“Smelt it,” said Geoffrey, curtly. “Is it good?”

“No, it isn’t good,” cried the old man, “and I want to know why—why my niece can’t let the girl wait upon you.”

“Why, you’re jealous, old boy,” cried Geoffrey. “Hang it all! are you to have all the good things, and best attention in the house? Let me have my sole in the next room, Miss Mullion. Your uncle’s low-spirited this morning, and I’ll go and keep him company. Come along, old fellow.”

To Madge’s great relief, and Uncle Paul’s utter astonishment, the result being a grateful look from the one and an angry snarl from the other, Geoffrey thrust his arm through that of the old man, marched him into his own room, and half forced him into his chair.

“There, begin your breakfast,” cried Geoffrey; “it’s getting cold.”

“It’s always getting cold, and how the devil am I to eat my lobster without salt? Every thing’s forgotten now, so that you may get what you want.”

“Rubbish!” said Geoffrey, taking a chair.

“It is not rubbish, sir. Didn’t I see that jade exchanging glances with you just now? and she’s always in your room.”

“Let the poor girl alone, and don’t worry her into hysterics, at all events not until I have got my sole,” cried Geoffrey; “and don’t talk stuff about what you don’t understand. What paper’s that?”

“Times. What I don’t understand?” cried Uncle Paul, who was foaming with rage at being so unceremoniously treated.

“Yes, what you don’t understand. Thanks, Miss Mullion, that will do. But there’s no salt.”

“I do forget so now,” said poor Madge.

“Yes, and what can you expect, if you stuff your brains full of other things?” snarled Uncle Paul, with the result that Madge beat a hasty retreat, and the maid came in with the salt and the rest of the breakfast.

“Now look here, Uncle Paul,” said Geoffrey, as the old man, after growling and snarling a little over his curry, took a liqueur of brandy in a very small cup of coffee, and seemed to calm down, “you are a shrewd old fellow.”

“Shrewd?” he cried, “I’m an old fool, a lunatic, an ass, or I should never have brought you up here.”

“Ah! we all do foolish things sometimes.”

“Yes, even to running after artful, coquetting jades of girls.”

“Well,” said Geoffrey—“By George! what a capital sole, flaky and creamy as can be. Try a bit.”

“Curse your sole!” snarled the old man, with his mouth full of curry.

“You mean the fish, I hope,” said Geoffrey, laughing. “Let’s see; what was I saying? Oh! I know, about doing foolish things. I’ve done a great many in my time, but running after coquettes was never one of them.”

“Nor yet indulging in mine moonshine?”

“Moonshine, eh? Well that brings me to what I was going to say. Now, look here, Uncle Paul.”

“Confound you, sir, don’t stick yourself on to me as a relative. You’ll want to borrow money next.”

“Very likely,” said Geoffrey.

“Ha-ha-ha! he-he-he!” chuckled the old man, with his face lighting up. “I should like to see you doing it. You’re a clever fellow, Master Trethick, but I don’t quite see you getting the better of me there.”

“That’s right,” said Geoffrey. “Now you look yourself again.” Uncle Paul’s face was transformed on the instant by an aspect of wrath, but Geoffrey took no notice, only went on with his breakfast and talked.

“Look here, old gentleman, from what I hear, some fifty thousand pounds went down that Wheal Carnac?”

“Quite. Fool’s money,” said Uncle Paul. “Give me that thick bit of the sole with the roe in.”

“I don’t know about fool’s money,” said Geoffrey, helping him to the choice piece of fish. “Now I’ve had some good looks at that place, and I’m beginning to be convinced that a little enterprise freshly brought to bear would result in good returns.”

“Exactly,” said Uncle Paul, grinning, “and you’d like me to invest a thousand pounds, and nine other fools to do the same, and to appoint you manager, with a salary of three hundred and fifty pounds a year, and Amos Pengelly, the mad preacher, as your foreman, at a hundred. I saw you through a glass, you two, poking and picking about.”

“Well, I should like a hundred a year for Pengelly,” said Geoffrey, “and he’d be well worth it.”

“Oh! I did not go high enough then,” said Uncle Paul, with a sneer. “Suppose we must make it five hundred a year. Will that enlist your lordship’s services?”

“I should spend a hundred pounds first,” said Geoffrey, quietly; “that would be ten pounds apiece for ten shareholders, in carefully examining the mine and testing the lodes, and then, if I thought it really would be a good venture, I’d give my services for fifteen per cent on the profits, and take not a penny besides.”

“Wouldn’t you really?” said the old man, with an aggravating sneer, as he threw himself back in his chair. “Ha-ha-ha! There, I’m better now. Look here, Master Geoffrey Trethick, I mean some day to buy Wheal Carnac for a building plot, and to turn the engine-house into a cottage, where I can live in peace, and not be aggravated to death by seeing that jade of a niece of mine running after every good-looking, or ill-looking, fellow she sees. I’ve got a bit of money, but before I’d put a penny in a mine, I’d cash the lot, and go and sit on a rock and make ducks-and-drakes with it at high water. As for you, my lad, I don’t like you, for you’re the most confoundedly impudent fellow I ever met; but I’ll give you this bit of advice: if you can find any fools to venture their money in an adventure, fix your salary and have it paid. No percentage. There, now I’ll give you one of my best cigars.”

He got up and unlocked a desk, out of whose drawer he took a couple, and relocked the holder, when, just as he was in the act of offering one to Geoffrey, the door opened, and Madge came in, looking flushed and pleased.

“What the dev—”

“It’s a letter for Mr Trethick,” cried the girl, hastily, “from Mr Penwynn, and it says ‘important.’”

“Then you should have sent it in,” cried the old man, shaking his fist at her.

“Penwynn—to see me this morning—important business,” read Geoffrey, flushing with pleasure. “Then,” he said aloud, “the tide has turned.”

“Oh, Mr Trethick! I’m so glad,” cried Madge; but her uncle made as if to throw something at her, and she ran out of the room, while Geoffrey hastily re-read the letter.

“Do you see that?” cried the old gentleman. “You’ve been talking nonsense to her, and you promised not.”

“I? no! Hang the girl!” cried Geoffrey, joyously. “Uncle Paul, old man, the tree’s going to bear fruit at last?”

Chapter Twenty One.

The Vicar is Shocked.

Geoffrey read it that he was to go up to. An Morlock, where he was informed that Mr Penwynn was engaged, but would be at liberty in a few minutes, and he was shown into the drawing-room, where he found the young vicar and Rhoda, who rose eagerly, but the next moment seemed rather constrained.

“The vicar has been discoursing of spiritual love,” said Geoffrey to himself, as he declined to notice, either Rhoda’s constraint or the young clergyman’s stiffness, but chatted away in his free-and-easy manner.

“By the way, Miss Penwynn,” he said, after a few moments’ conversation, during which he felt that he was in the way, “I saw you were at church last Sunday.”

“I was very glad to see you there, Mr Trethick,” interposed the vicar, hastily.

“Thanks,” said Geoffrey, bluffly. “I shall come—sometimes. Don’t you set me down as a heathen. I went to the chapel in the evening.”

“Indeed!” said the vicar, gazing at him in a horrified way, his looks plainly saying—“You a University man, and go to that chapel!”

“Yes,” said Geoffrey, “and heard a capital sermon.”

“Indeed!” said the vicar again, with a slightly supercilious smile.

“Capital,” said Geoffrey, “by a miner—a rough fellow—one Pengelly.”

“Yes, yes. I know Amos Pengelly,” said Rhoda, hastily.

“Then you know a capital preacher, Miss Penwynn,” cried Geoffrey, nodding to her. “He’s as rough and uncultivated as can be—rather illogical sometimes; but the fellow’s earnestness, and the way he swayed the congregation, were something startling.”

“He is one of the local preachers,” said Rhoda, “and, I believe, a very good man.”

As she spoke Rhoda involuntarily glanced at her visitor’s feet.

“With a most awful temper,” said Geoffrey, laughing. “He got quite angry with the people’s sins while he was preaching.”

“I must confess,” said the vicar, flushing, and speaking rather warmly—“hem! I must confess, Mr Trethick, that the way in which the people down here usurp the priestly office is very shocking, and—and really gives me a great deal of pain.”

“Yes,” said Geoffrey, coolly, “I dare say it would. But I do not see why it should. Here, for instance, is a truly earnest man who finds his way right to the hearts of the people, and he does what you do—prays that they may be led into better ways. His language is rough, I grant, but they understand its homeliness; and if they wouldn’t be so fond of groaning and shouting out ‘Glory’ and ‘Hallelujah’ at incongruous times I should not care. One thing is very evident: he rouses people out of what your clerical gentlemen would call their sinful lethargy.”

“I must say,” said the vicar, “that this is all very terrible to me.”

“Well, I suppose so,” continued Geoffrey. “You see, Mr Lee, you view it all from a University and High Church point of view.”

“And pray, sir, how would you view it?” said the vicar, with his usual nervousness dropped, and speaking like a doughty champion of the church militant, while Rhoda’s lips parted, and a slight flush came into her cheeks, as she grew quite excited over the verbal battle.

“How would I view it?” said Geoffrey. “Why, from a common-sense point of view—matter-of-fact—human nature.”

“Mr Trethick,” cried the vicar, “you—but I beg pardon, Miss Penwynn; this is not a discussion to carry on before you. Mr Trethick, we may talk of this again.”

“Oh, go on!” cried Rhoda, naïvely, with her excitement flashing out of her eyes. “I like it.”

“Then I will speak,” said the vicar, angrily. “Mr Trethick, you pain me by your remark, and I feel it my duty to say that your words savour of most heterodox opinions.”

“Yes,” said Geoffrey, “I suppose they do. I am decidedly unorthodox. I’ve studied nature too much to hold to many of our old college notions.”

“Perhaps you would advocate free thinking?” said the vicar, with a slight sneer; and Rhoda flushed a little more, as she eagerly looked at Geoffrey for his reply.

“Free thinking? Not I. ’Pon my word, Mr Lee, I believe I’m too religious for that.”

“Religious?”

“Yes! Why not? Cannot a man go to chapel, or, in other words, leave off going to church sometimes, without being taxed with irreligion? Look here, Mr Lee, you and I are about contemporaries, and do you know I think if we want to get on here in our different lines of life, the first thing we have to do is to learn of the people.”

“My duty here, sir,” said the vicar, coldly, and growing very pale and upright, “is to teach.”

“So is mine,” said Geoffrey, laughing; “yours spiritual, mine carnal; but, my dear fellow, the first thing we have to do, it seems to me, is to learn the right way to the people’s hearts.”

Rhoda glanced from one to the other, and her pulses began to beat, as she clasped her hands on her lap and excitedly listened for more.

“Perhaps so,” said the vicar, coldly, and he glanced at the door, as if to bring the interview to an end, and yet not liking to leave Geoffrey there the master of the situation.

“For instance, take your sermon last Sunday.”

“Mr Trethick!” cried the vicar, half rising.

“Don’t be offended, I mean no harm,” said Geoffrey, smiling, “and I am not talking to an elder, but a contemporary, as I said before. Besides, Miss Penwynn heard it, and she shall be judge.”

“I beg, Mr Trethick,” began the vicar, but on glancing at Rhoda’s eager face, he determined not to be mastered in argument, especially upon his own ground.

“I maintain,” said Geoffrey, coolly, “that your sermon was a masterly bit of logic.”

The vicar stared.

“A capital line of argument.”

Rhoda nodded.

“Most scholarly.”

A faint flush began to appear in the vicar’s cheeks.

“In fact, an excellent sermon,” said Geoffrey.

“Then why do you allude to it?” said the vicar, rather warmly.

“Because I maintain that it was perfectly unsuited for a simple-minded, ignorant congregation of fishermen and miners. What do they care about how Saint Augustine wrote, or Polycarp thought, or the doings of Chrysostom the Golden Mouthed? Your words about the heresies and the Gnostics and Manichaeans were all thrown away. The early days of the Church don’t interest them a bit, but they can understand about the patriarchs and their troubles and weaknesses, because the masterly hand that wrote their lives painted them as men similar to themselves.”

“Mr Trethick!”

“All right; I’ve just done,” said Geoffrey. “There was another sermon of yours too, I heard you preach, a well-meant one, but somehow you did not get hold of them. You had taken the text about the apostles becoming fishers of men, and the rough fellows could not see that it was their duty to give up their boats and nets, and forsake their wives and little ones, as you downright told them they ought.”

“I hope I know my duty, Mr Trethick,” said the vicar, sternly.

“I hope you do, sir; but somehow, as I say, you don’t get hold of them. Now Pengelly seems to fit what he says to their everyday life, and shows them how to follow the apostles’ example in their self-denial and patience. Why, my dear sir, the people here care no more for the early fathers of the Church than—than I do,” he added, at a loss for a simile.

“Mr Trethick, you surprise me,” gasped the vicar, “you pain me.”

“Do I?” said Geoffrey. “Well, I don’t want to do so. Now that man on Sunday night; he took for his text—”

“Miss Penwynn, Mr Trethick,” said the vicar, rising, “I find—the time—I must say good-morning.”

“I’m afraid I’ve been too free-speaking,” said Geoffrey, earnestly, as he held out his hand. “It’s a bad habit of mine to get warm in argument; and I dare say I’ve been preaching most heretically.”

The vicar hesitated for a moment, but Geoffrey’s manner disarmed him, and besides, Rhoda was looking on.

The result was that he shook hands warmly, and said, with a smile, “Mr Trethick, we must have a few more arguments. I am not beaten yet. Good-morning.”

“Beaten? no,” said Geoffrey. “Good-morning. Miss Penwynn, I’m afraid I’ve shocked you,” he said, merrily, as soon as they were left alone; and as he spoke he could not help admiring the bright, animated face before him; for after the vicar’s smooth, flowing speeches that morning, Geoffrey’s brisk, sharp way had seemed to her like the racy breeze of the sea, fanning her spirit, and making her very pulses tingle.

“Shocked?” she said, eagerly; “I liked the discussion. I do love to hear a man speak as he really feels.”

“Do you?” said Geoffrey, showing his white teeth. “Well really, Miss Penwynn, if we ever meet much in the future you will invariably hear me speak as I feel. I always did it, and invariably got myself into trouble.”

“For being honest?” said Rhoda.

“Yes, for being honest. We’re a strange people, Miss Penwynn. Every one advocates the truth, and straightforwardness, but, as a rule, those two qualities find very little favour.”

“I’m afraid there is a great deal in what you say,” said Rhoda, thoughtfully.

“I’m sure there is,” exclaimed Geoffrey. “It’s a queer world altogether, but I like it all the same.”

“I hope we all do,” replied Rhoda, smiling.

“Of course; and we do all like it,” said Geoffrey, in an imperious way; “and when next you hear any one, my dear young lady, calling it a vale of tears, and wanting to be somewhere else, you set that person down as an impostor or a fool.”

Rhoda raised her eyebrows, feeling half-annoyed at his freedom, half amused.

“It’s a splendid world, and it’s half bitters, half sweets.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, and wisely so. The bitters make us like the sweets. I find old Mr Paul up yonder do me no end of good when I’m put out. He’s all bitters.”

“And Madge Mullion supplies the sweets,” thought Rhoda.

“Don’t you think I ought to have gone into the Church, Miss Penwynn?” said Geoffrey, abruptly.

“No. Why?”

“Because I’m so fond of preaching. Somehow it always sets me going if I come across a man with about two notions only in his head, which he jumps to the conclusion will do admirably for the north and south poles of the world, and that he has nothing else to do but set the world turning upon them; and gets cross if some one tells him the world is really turning the other way. But I’m preaching again. There, I frightened the parson away, and if I don’t change my tone, or Mr Penwynn does not soon send for me, I shall scare you as well.”

“I am not so easily alarmed,” said Rhoda, laughing; “but I hope you are meeting with success in your efforts, Mr Trethick?”

“Success, my dear madam?” replied Geoffrey, laughing outright. “Why, I have been hammering away ever since I came down, months now, and have not succeeded in any thing but in making the people harder against me.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you. Sympathy’s nice,” said Geoffrey. “But I’m not beaten yet, Miss Penwynn, and now I think the sun is going to shine, for Mr Penwynn has sent me a line asking me to come and see him; and I have a shrewd suspicion that it means business.”

“Mr Penwynn will see you, sir, in the study,” said a servant, opening the door; and, after a frank good-by, Geoffrey swung out of the room, Rhoda’s eyes following him till the door closed.

But she did not sigh, she did not go to the glass and look conscious, she did not begin to commune with her spirit, she only said, quietly,—

“There is a something about him that I like!”

Chapter Twenty Two.

A Business Interview.

“Ah, Mr Trethick!” said the banker, quietly, as Geoffrey was ushered into his handsome study, crammed with books that he seldom read, “I hope I have not brought you up from any important engagement.”

“Well, yes, I was going to be very busy,” said Geoffrey, “I had an appointment on the cliff.”

“I am very sorry,” said the banker, “I thought—”

“That I had nothing to do, and would come down directly. You were quite right, sir, and here I am.”

“But your engagement?”

“Was with myself—to go and loaf about and stare down deserted mine shafts, and growl at the obstinacy of proprietors who refuse to be made rich.”

Mr Penwynn had begun to look disappointed; he now brightened a little.

“You are quite at liberty then, Mr Trethick?”

“Quite, sir.”

“And willing to earn a few guineas?”

“Most willing, sir. When shall I begin? I’m growing rusty from disuse.”

Mr Penwynn sat thinking for a few moments, gazing at Geoffrey, and then he began,—

“Rundell and Sharp spoke most highly of you, Mr Trethick.”

“I thank them for their good opinion, sir.”

“They said that you were a man most thoroughly to be trusted, and that you were conscientious to a degree.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Geoffrey, sharply. “When did they say that?”

Mr Penwynn was a little taken aback, but he recovered himself, and said with a smile,—

“In a letter that I have received from them.”

“Then you have been writing to make further inquiries about me, Mr Penwynn.”

“Well—yes, I have.”

“Good!” said Geoffrey, quietly. “Then I presume you are satisfied, Mr Penwynn?”

“Yes, I am,” was the reply, “and on the strength of their recommendations I am about to try and throw something—just a trifle—in your way.”

“Mining, I hope?”

“Yes, Mr Trethick, mining; but on one condition.”

“And what is that, Mr Penwynn?”

“That I have your whole and sole effort to work for my interest to the best of your ability.”

“Why, of course, sir,” said Geoffrey, “I should be taking your pay.”

“Yes, Mr Trethick; but I have known cases where a man takes pay from one employer, and works in the interest of another.”

“Mr Penwynn!”

“I don’t for a moment hint that you would do such a thing, Mr Trethick. I merely say to you, I trust you to do for me the best you can, and not let yourself be tempted away from the path of rectitude by any of the scoundrels you may encounter.”

“Mr Penwynn,” said Geoffrey, warmly, “you ought not to speak to me like that after the letter you say you have had. But now, sir, suppose we proceed to business?”

“Exactly?” said Mr Penwynn, drawing his chair a little nearer.

“The fact is, Mr Trethick—this in confidence, mind, and for the present I don’t want to appear in the matter at all—I have been offered at a price a mine over which two or three companies have failed. I want to know whether it is worth my while to buy that mine, and I am going to act upon your Report.”

“A tin-mine?” said Geoffrey.

“Yes; a disused mine.”

“Not Wheal Carnac?”

“Yes, Wheal Carnac,” said Mr Penwynn, starting. “What of it?”

“Buy it!” said Geoffrey, sharply.

“Buy it?” said Mr Penwynn, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“What I say,” said Geoffrey, eagerly; “buy it.”

“You are not long in giving in a report, Mr Trethick,” said the banker, suspiciously. “May I ask what you know of Wheal Carnac?”

“More than you suppose, sir,” was the reply. “I have been looking about that place a good deal, and I am of opinion that with capital I could make it pay.”

“Oh, yes! so I suppose,” said the banker; “but you are going much too fast, Mr Trethick. What I want to know is whether the mine is worth buying at a price.”

“What price?” exclaimed Geoffrey.

Mr Penwynn hesitated, bit his nails, tapped the table, and looked again and again at his companion’s searching eyes.

“Well,” he said at last—“this is in confidence, Mr Trethick—eight hundred pounds!”

“Why the land’s worth it,” cried Geoffrey; “there can be no doubt about that.”

“Possibly,” said Mr Penwynn.

“The buildings—the material,” cried Geoffrey. “Why really, Mr Penwynn, I could give you a decisive answer at once. The place is worth buying.”

The banker sat gazing at him in a curious, searching way, and he made no reply for a few minutes; but it was evident that he was a little infected by Geoffrey’s enthusiasm.

“Are you willing to go down the mine as far as you can go, Mr Trethick—I mean for water—and to see what tokens you can find of tin ore?”

“Yes,” said Geoffrey, “I’ll go down again if you like.”

“Again?”

“Yes; I’ve been down as far as I could go.”

“You have, Mr Trethick?”

“Yes, sir,” said Geoffrey, smiling, “I have.”

“But right down to the water?”

“Right down into it, sir,” replied Geoffrey, laughing. “I had a regular ducking, for my companion let the rope slip.”

“Do you mean to tell me, Mr Trethick, that you made the descent of Wheal Carnac?”

“To be sure I do, sir. Look here, Mr Penwynn, I took rather a fancy to that place. Every thing is so thorough and well done. Then I met with a rough mining fellow, one Amos Pengelly. Know him?”

Mr Penwynn nodded.

“He is sanguine about the mine, and asked me to examine it. I did so as far as I could, and then one night we procured a rope, and I rigged up a ship’s block on a stoutish cross-beam, took a lantern, and Pengelly let me down.”

“By himself?”

“Oh, yes! sir; he’s as strong as a horse. But he did duck me.”

“Mr Trethick,” said the banker, pulling out his pocket-handkerchief, “do you mean to tell me that you trusted to one man to lower you down that pit?”

“I do, Mr Penwynn, and a precious black pit it is; and, as I tell you, he let me down rather too far, but not till I had had a good look round.”

“And what did you discover?” said the banker, wiping the palms of his wet hands.

“Nothing,” said Geoffrey, bluntly. “No more than I could find out on the heap of débris. No thorough examination could be made without the mine were pumped out.”

“And that would cost?—”

“Fifty or a hundred pounds, perhaps two,” said Geoffrey. “Principally for carriage of pumping apparatus, fixing, and taking down again.”

“You have been thoroughly into the matter, then,” said Mr Penwynn, who was growing more and more interested.

“Thoroughly,” said Geoffrey, bluntly, “I don’t play with what I take up, sir.”

The banker shifted his position, got up, walked about the room, sat down again, and began tapping the table with his fingers.

“Will you have a cigar, Mr Trethick?” he said, unlocking a drawer.

“Thanks, no,” said Geoffrey. “I don’t smoke over business.”

There was another pause, during which Geoffrey sat patiently awaiting the banker’s orders, while that gentleman was evidently turning the affair well over in his mind.

At last he spoke.

“Mr Trethick,” he said, “what remuneration should you ask to undertake to examine that mine?”

“Can’t be done without pumping out, sir.”

“Supposing I place the necessary funds at your disposal?”

Geoffrey drew his chair closer.

“Do you mean this, Mr Penwynn?”

“I never joke over business-matters, Mr Trethick,” said the banker.

“Mr Penwynn,” said Geoffrey, rising, and by his words chasing away from the banker’s mind any lingering doubt of his energy, “I have so much faith in making that mine pay, that I’ll do what you ask for nothing, but be content with a percentage on future profits.”

“No, Mr Trethick, I never work in that way,” said Mr Penwynn. “I ask your services on what I suppose to be a fortnight or three weeks’ task. I want your best energies, and a truthful and just report, not highly coloured, rather the reverse. If you will do this for me, I will give you a fee of five-and-twenty guineas. Will that do?”

“Do? Yes!” cried Geoffrey, flushing. “When shall I begin?”

“When you please,” said the banker, smiling at his earnestness.

“And you place funds at my disposal?”

“Yes, to the amount of a hundred pounds. If that is not enough, you may spend another fifty. Then stop. But mind you are doing this under orders. I do not wish to appear in the matter yet. If it were known that I was going in for such a mad venture, as people would call it, I should lose all credit in the place. Not that it would much matter,” he added, with a contemptuous smile. “Well, Mr Trethick, shall we draw up a memorandum to the effect that you will give me your best services in this commission? I trust to you, implicitly.”

“If you like,” said Geoffrey, grimly, as he once more rose and took an excited stride up and down the room. “Mr Penwynn,” he exclaimed, stopping short before the banker, “you have given me new life in this display of confidence. There’s my memorandum and bond, sir,” he cried, stretching out his broad, firm hand, and gripping that of the banker. “You sha’n’t repent it, come what may.”

“I hope not, Trethick,” said Mr Penwynn, smiling, “but time tries all.”

“Oh, no!” said Geoffrey, sharply. “That’s an old saw, and I put no faith in saws. Time will try me, Mr Penwynn; there’s no doubt of that. And now I’m off.”

“It’s close upon one o’clock,” said Mr Penwynn, glancing at his watch. “You’ll stay and have lunch?”

“No, thanks,” said Geoffrey; “I’m going to work off some of this rust. But how am I to let you know how I am getting on?”

“Don’t you trouble about that,” said Mr Penwynn, laughing. “You don’t know Carnac yet. Why, every step you take will be known all over the place, and people will be asking what madman is finding the money.”

“I see,” said Geoffrey, nodding.

“Give me a written report when you have done. Mr Chynoweth shall send you a cheque-book, and your cheques will be honoured to the sum I name.”

Geoffrey looked him full in the eyes for a moment or two longer, and then strode off, Rhoda, who was at the window, seeing him pass, evidently deeply intent upon something, for he paid no heed to her, but made straight for Horton mine to see Pengelly, while Mr Penwynn walked up and down his study with a satisfied air, as if he considered that he had done a good morning’s work.

“He’s the right man,” he said, rubbing his hands. “He’s as true as steel!”

Putting on his hat, he walked down to the office, he knew not why, but taking a deeper interest in the affair each moment, and passing Tregenna on the opposite side of the way.

“Send Mr Geoffrey Trethick a cheque-book, Chynoweth,” he said, as he entered his office, and spoiled a most interesting game of whist.

Mr Chynoweth took down his slate, and made an entry.

“Honour his cheques to the amount of a hundred and fifty.”

This entry was also made upon the slate, and Mr Penwynn walked back to his lunch.

Mr Chynoweth became thoughtful. He had played out a hand at whist in his desk that morning; and he had written an offer of marriage to Miss Pavey, who had won five and sixpence of him the previous night at whist; but this was a very important matter, and thinking that he could remain a bachelor a little longer, he took out his letter, opened, read it, sighed, and, striking a match, carefully burned it on the hearth.

“Tregenna here—Trethick to draw cheques—what’s that mean?” said Mr Chynoweth, thoughtfully. “What does the governor mean by that? I hope he is not going in for mining. If he is—”

He paused for a few moments.

“I wouldn’t bet a crown he is not going to try Wheal Carnac.”

Chapter Twenty Three.

How Tregenna Hooked his Fish.

There was, of course, a reason for the banker’s actions.

John Tregenna had at once taken advantage of the proposal that he should still be on friendly terms with the Penwynns, and, calling frequently and dining there, set himself, in a pleasant, frank manner, to remove any unpleasant feeling that might exist in Rhoda’s mind.

To her he was gentlemanly and courteous, without formality, showing in every way that it was his desire that the past should be forgotten. With Mr Penwynn he resumed his old business relations, and, as the banker’s confidential solicitor, he finished and carried through a tiresome law case, which ridded Mr Penwynn of a good deal of anxiety, and put five hundred pounds in his pocket.

“By the way,” he said, on the morning when he had brought in the news of the satisfactory settlement, and it had been discussed, “they want to sell Wheal Carnac.”

“So Chynoweth told me some little time back,” said Mr Penwynn. “I wish they may get a customer.”

“Well, so do I, if it comes to that,” said Tregenna, “because I am to have a hundred if I effect a sale.”

“And where will you get customers? Why, they’ve wasted no end in putting it up for auction in London, advertisements and one way and the other.”

“Yes, and that makes them willing now to part with the place for a mere song.”