grew scarcely anything but furze, heather and rag-wort, the rest
being bare, storm-weathered granite, they came suddenly upon a
dry-looking brown-faced man with a coil of rope worn across his chest
like an Alpine guide.

He was seated on the low wall dotted with pink stone-crop and golden and
grey lichens, chewing something, the brown stain at the corner of his
lips suggesting that the something was tobacco; and he turned his head
slowly toward them, and spoke in a harsh grating voice, as they came up.

"Going to the old mine?" he said. "I thought you would, after what I
told you this morning. I'll go with you."

"Did you bring that rope on purpose?" said Gwyn, quickly.

"O' course, my son. You couldn't look at the gashly place without."

Gwyn glanced at Joe, and the latter laughed, while the mining captain
displayed his brown teeth.

"Right, aren't it?" he said. "Didn't tell the Colonel what I said, I
s'pose?"

"Yes, I did," cried Gwyn; "and he as good as said it was all nonsense."

"Maybe it be, and maybe it ban't," said the man, quietly. "You two come
along with me and have a look. I've brought a hammer with me, too; and
I say, let's chip off a bit or two of the stuff, and see what it's like.
If it's good, your father may like to work it. If it's poor, we
sha'n't be no worse off than we was before, shall we?"

"No, of course not," said Gwyn, "what do you say, Joe--shall we go?"

"Of course," was the reply; and they trudged on together for about a
hundred yards, and then climbed over the loose stone-wall, and then up a
rugged slope dotted with gigantic fragments of granite. A stone's throw
or so on their left was the edge of the uneven cliff, which went down
sheer to the sea; and all about them the great masses towered up, and
their path lay anywhere in and out among tall rocks wreathed with
bramble and made difficult with gorse.

But they were used to such scrambles, and, the mining captain leading,
they struggled on with the gulls floating overhead, starting a cormorant
from his perch, and sending a couple of red-legged choughs dashing over
the rough edge to seek refuge among the rocks on the face of the cliff.

It was a glorious morning, the sea of a rich bright blue, and here and
there silvery patches told where some shoal of fish was playing at the
surface or demolishing fry.

There was not a house to be seen, and the place was wild and chaotic in
the extreme, but no one alluded to its rugge