very well, sir, I am--Hemmings--I am--coming up."

In two minutes he appeared, Christopher Hemmings, secretary of the New
Colliery Company, known in the City-behind his back--as
"Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings. He grasped Scorrier's hand--the gesture
was deferential, yet distinguished. Too handsome, too capable, too
important, his figure, the cut of his iron-grey beard, and his
intrusively fine eyes, conveyed a continual courteous invitation to
inspect their infallibilities. He stood, like a City "Atlas," with his
legs apart, his coat-tails gathered in his hands, a whole globe of
financial matters deftly balanced on his nose. "Look at me!" he seemed
to say. "It's heavy, but how easily I carry it. Not the man to let it
down, Sir!"

"I hope I see you well, Mr. Scorrier," he began. "I have come round
about our mine. There is a question of a fresh field being opened
up--between ourselves, not before it's wanted. I find it difficult to
get my Board to take a comprehensive view. In short, the question is:
Are you prepared to go out for us, and report on it? The fees will be
all right." His left eye closed. "Things have been very--er--dicky; we
are going to change our superintendent. I have got little Pippin--you
know little Pippin?"

Scorrier murmured, with a feeling of vague resentment: "Oh yes. He's not
a mining man!"

Hemmings replied: "We think that he will do." 'Do you?' thought
Scorrier; 'that's good of you!'

He had not altogether shaken off a worship he had felt for Pippin
--"King" Pippin he was always called, when they had been boys at the
Camborne Grammar-school. "King" Pippin! the boy with the bright colour,
very bright hair, bright, subtle, elusive eyes, broad shoulders, little
stoop in the neck, and a way of moving it quickly like a bird; the boy
who was always at the top of everything, and held his head as if looking
for something further to be the top of. He remembered how one day "King"
Pippin had said to him in his soft way, "Young Scorrie, I'll do your sums
for you"; and in answer to his dubious, "Is that all right?" had replied,
"Of course--I don't want you to get behind that beast Blake, he's not a
Cornishman" (the beast Blake was an Irishman not yet twelve). He
remembered, too, an occasion when "King" Pippin with two other boys
fought six louts and got a licking, and how Pippin sat for half an hour
afterwards, all bloody, his head in his hands, rocking to and fro, and
weeping tears of