rope, it came undone, and you fell headlong into
that water down below, rose, swam to the side and then crept along a
horizontal passage to where it opened out on the sea yonder?"

"Yes, father," said the boy, recalling his sensations as his father
spoke.

"Bless my heart!" exclaimed the Colonel. "Well, Gwyn, you're a queer
sort of boy. Not very clever, and you give me a good deal of anxiety as
to how you are going to turn out. But one thing is very evident--with
all your faults, you are not a coward."

"Oh, yes, I am, father," said Gwyn, shaking his head. "You don't know
what a fright I was in."

"Fright! Enough to frighten anybody. I've faced fire times enough, my
boy, and had to gallop helter-skelter with a handful of brave fellows
against a thousand or more enemies who were thirsting for our blood!
But I dared not have gone down that pit hanging at the end of a rope.
No, Gwyn, my boy, you are no coward. There, show me now where you were
drawn up."

Gwyn led the way to the foot of the granite ridge, fully expecting to
hear his father say that he could not climb up there; but, to his
surprise, the Colonel mounted actively enough, and walked along the
rugged top to where it ended in the great buttress, and there he stood
at the very edge gazing down.

"Where were you, Gwyn?" he said at last; and the boy pointed out the
projection beneath which the adit opened out.

"To be sure. Yes, I couldn't quite make it out," said the Colonel,
coolly, as he turned away; but Gwyn noticed that he took out his
handkerchief to pass it over his forehead, and then wiped the insides of
his hands as if they were damp.

"Let's go back by the road," said the Colonel, after shading his eyes
and taking a look round; "but I want to pass the mouth of the mine."

Upon reaching the latter, the Colonel drew a hammer from his pocket, and
after routing out a few grey pieces of stone from where they lay beneath
the furze bushes, he cracked and chipped several, till one which looked
red in the new cleavage, and was studded with little blackish-purple,
glistening grains, took his fancy.

"Carry this home for me, Gwyn," he said. "I wonder whether that piece
ever came out of the mine?"

"I think all that large sloping bank covered with bushes and brambles
came out of the mine some time, father," said the boy. "It seems to
have been all raised up round about the mouth there."

"Eh? You think so?"

"Yes, father; and as the pieces