te his ducking at St. Just, continued to fill his chair and to
fulfil his destiny in the airy little street in London, where, for many
years, he represented Wheal Dooem, and "did" a too confiding public. In
this work he was ably assisted by Secretary Jack Muddle, who became
quite celebrated as a clear expounder and explainer of veins, lodes,
ores, cross-cuts, shafts, levels, winzes, minerals, metals, and mines--
insomuch that he was regarded by many of the confiding public who
frequented his office as a more thoroughly learned and scientific man
than George Augustus himself. It is interesting, how ever, to have to
record the curious fact that the too confiding public changed their
opinion at last on this head, and came to regard Secretary Jack as a
humbug, and the managing director as a scoundrel. Unfortunately this
change of opinion did not take place until the whole of the too
confiding public (the T.C.P., as Clearemout styled them) had lost large
sums of money, and a few of them become bankrupt. When affairs had
reached this crisis, one of the T.C.P.--an irascible old gentleman,
whose fiery nature seemed to have singed all the hair off his head,
leaving it completely bald--went down to Cornwall in a passion to sift
the thing for himself. There he found the Great Wheal Dooem pump-engine
going full swing, day and night, under the superintendence of one man,
while the vast works underground (on which depended the "enormous"
dividends promised to and expected by the T.C.P.) were carried on by
another man and a boy. On making this discovery the fiery old gentleman
with the denuded head left Cornwall--still in a passion--and exploded in
the face of a meeting of the members of the T.C.P., who immediately
exploded in each other's faces, and appointed an indignation committee
to go and explode, with unexampled fury, in the faces of the managing
director and Secretary Jack. But these knowing gentlemen, being aware
that the explosion was coming, had wisely betaken themselves to the
retirement and seclusion of the Continent.

Without troubling the reader with further particulars, we may say, in
conclusion, that the result was the stoppage of Wheal Dooem mining
operations, and the summary dismissal of the two men and the boy. At
the present day the ruins of that great concern may be seen standing on
the wild sea-cliffs of west Cornwall, solitary, gaunt, and grey, with
the iron "bob" of the pump-engine motionless and pointi