e found nowhere."

"It doesn't strike you, then, that Mr. Coe might have taken it with
him?"

"Lor, Sir," cried the inn-keeper, with admiration, "and so he must ha'
done! Of course it strikes one when the thing has been put into one's
head. Well, 'twas a good lantern, and now 'tis lost. Dear me, dear me!"

Golden visions of succeeding to the management of the inn, and of taking
to the furniture and fixings in the gross, had flitted across this
honest gentleman's brain, and the disappearance of the lantern affected
him with the acute sense of pecuniary damage. The general valuation
would probably be no less because of the absence of this article.

"Send out and borrow another, as many, in fact, as you can get," said
Richard, impatiently; "and get ready a torch or two besides. Pick out
four of the strongest men yonder, and bid them come with me, and search
Wheal Danes."

"What! that old pit. Sir? You'll not find a man to do it--no, not if
they knowed as master was at the bottom of it. You wait till morning."

"Your master _is_ at the bottom of it. I feel sure he took the lantern
with him to search that mine. I will give them a pound apiece to start
at once. Pack up this food, and lend them a mattress to bring him home
upon. Be quick! be quick!"

Richard's energy fairly overpowered the phlegmatic inn-keeper, whose
conscience, perhaps, also smote him with respect to his missing master;
and he set about the execution of these orders promptly. Wheal Danes, he
had truly hinted, was a very unpopular spot with its neighbors after
nightfall; but, on the other hand, sovereigns were rare in Gethin, and
greatly prized. In less than half an hour the necessaries which Richard
had indicated were procured, and a party, consisting of himself, four
stalwart miners, and the inn-keeper, started for the pit. These were
followed by half the inhabitants of the little village, attracted by the
rumor of their purpose, which had oozed out from the bar of the _Gethin
Castle_. The windy down had probably never known so strange a concourse
as that which presently streamed over it, with torch and lantern, and
stood around the mouth of the disused mine. The night was dark, and
nothing could be seen save what the flare of the lights they carried
showed them--a jagged rim of pit without a bottom. Notwithstanding their
numbers there was but little talk among them; they had a native dread of
this dismal place, and, besides, there might now be a gha