s could be, and enjoying herself with the children. Not wishing
the maid to see him tipsy, he pressed the matter no further; but applied
himself to the bottle again, and drank her health with pleasure.

However, after three days of this, his constitution rose against it, and
he became quite sober; with a certain lowness of heart moreover, and a
sense of error. And his first desire to right himself, and easiest way
to do it, was by exerting parental authority upon Gwenny. Possessed with
this intention (for he was not a sweet tempered man, and his head was
aching sadly) he sought for Gwenny high and low; first with threats, and
then with fears, and then with tears and wailing. And so he became to
the other men a warning and a great annoyance. Therefore they combined
to swear what seemed a very likely thing, and might be true for all
they knew, to wit, that Gwenny had come to seek for her father down the
shaft-hole, and peering too eagerly into the dark, had toppled forward,
and gone down, and lain at the bottom as dead as a stone.

'And thou being so happy with drink,' the villains finished up to him,
'and getting drunker every day, we thought it shame to trouble thee; and
we buried the wench in the lower drift; and no use to think more of her;
but come and have a glass, Sim.'

But Simon Carfax swore that drink had lost him his wife, and now had
lost him the last of his five children, and would lose him his own soul,
if further he went on with it; and from that day to his death he never
touched strong drink again. Nor only this; but being soon appointed
captain of the mine, he allowed no man on any pretext to bring cordials
thither; and to this and his stern hard rule and stealthy secret
management (as much as to good luck and place) might it be attributed
that scarcely any but themselves had dreamed about this Exmoor mine.

As for me, I had no ambition to become a miner; and the state to which
gold-seeking had brought poor Uncle Ben was not at all encouraging. My
business was to till the ground, and tend the growth that came of it,
and store the fruit in Heaven's good time, rather than to scoop and
burrow like a weasel or a rat for the yellow root of evil. Moreover, I
was led from home, between the hay and corn harvests (when we often have
a week to spare), by a call there was no resisting; unless I gave up all
regard for wrestling, and for my county.

Now here many persons may take me amiss, and there always has been