erhaps. He's a true Cornishman.'

The morning of arrival at the mines was grey and cheerless; a cloud of
smoke, beaten down by drizzle, clung above the forest; the wooden houses
straggled dismally in the unkempt semblance of a street, against a
background of endless, silent woods. An air of blank discouragement
brooded over everything; cranes jutted idly over empty trucks; the long
jetty oozed black slime; miners with listless faces stood in the rain;
dogs fought under their very legs. On the way to the hotel they met no
one busy or serene except a Chinee who was polishing a dish-cover.

The late superintendent, a cowed man, regaled them at lunch with his
forebodings; his attitude toward the situation was like the food, which
was greasy and uninspiring. Alone together once more, the two newcomers
eyed each other sadly.

"Oh dear!" sighed Pippin. "We must change all this, Scorrier; it will
never do to go back beaten. I shall not go back beaten; you will have to
carry me on my shield;" and slyly: "Too heavy, eh? Poor fellow!" Then
for a long time he was silent, moving his lips as if adding up the cost.
Suddenly he sighed, and grasping Scorrier's arm, said: "Dull, aren't I?
What will you do? Put me in your report, 'New Superintendent--sad, dull
dog--not a word to throw at a cat!'" And as if the new task were too much
for him, he sank back in thought. The last words he said to Scorrier
that night were: "Very silent here. It's hard to believe one's here for
life. But I feel I am. Mustn't be a coward, though!" and brushing his
forehead, as though to clear from it a cobweb of faint thoughts, he
hurried off.

Scorrier stayed on the veranda smoking. The rain had ceased, a few stars
were burning dimly; even above the squalor of the township the scent of
the forests, the interminable forests, brooded. There sprang into his
mind the memory of a picture from one of his children's fairy books--the
picture of a little bearded man on tiptoe, with poised head and a great
sword, slashing at the castle of a giant. It reminded him of Pippin.
And suddenly, even to Scorrier--whose existence was one long encounter
with strange places--the unseen presence of those woods, their heavy,
healthy scent, the little sounds, like squeaks from tiny toys, issuing
out of the gloomy silence, seemed intolerable, to be shunned, from the
mere instinct of self-preservation. He thought of the evening he had
spent in the bosom of "Down-by-th