or hut half
hidden by leaves leaning against the side of the hill.

An old miner, who worked a good way off in the pits belonging to the
prince, came up now very much out of humour to Edward. "Another run
over here to no purpose!" he cried peevishly: "I wanted to speak to
the young shatter-brained jackanapes; and now I hear from the
smelting-lads down in the town, that he has just been scampering
through it, and not a soul can tell where he is gone."

"What business have you with him, friend Conrad?" asked Edward.

"What business should one have with young chaps such as he!" replied
the cross old man. "There have I had to buy him a wonderful book about
mines over yonder, of the white-headed master miner who is as old as
the hills, and who has been blind these three years: the marvellous
grey-beard copied the book ages ago, when he was young and had a
younker's itching for knowing more than his neighbours, from the
manuscript of a travelling Tyrolese, and took the trouble of
scratching likenesses of all the foolish pictures in it. Now however
that he is blind, he can't see to read it; so I have bought it for
young master Lorenz, our William here; and lo! the coxcomb is clean
over the mountains."

"What does the little book contain?" said Edward.

"Only look into it yourself," continued the other: "all sorts of
stories about ghosts and spectres; clews for finding out the places
over there in the high mountains, where one meets with gold and
diamonds at the bottom of caves and sand pits in spots which mortal
man has seldom set foot in. There are a number of marks, they say,
which in ages of yore were carved on the hard rocks or written on the
banks of the brooks: certain knowing Italians notcht and scored the
places some two or three hundred years ago, and stuck in pieces of tin
and pebbles which they laid after a fashion of their own: now however,
the old man tells me, they are hard to find; for the mountain-spirits
and goblins, who hate being disturbed, have shoved away many of the
stones that might have served for signposts, and have utterly deranged
their order."

Edward laught as he turned over the leaves of the strange book.

"None of your scoffing, young gentleman!" cried the old man: "so you
too are one of their super-clever new-fangled wiseacres. But if you
were once to see what I have seen, when all alone far down
underground, cut off from the heavens and the whole world, with no
light but my lamp, and