e in rack and ruin."

"Instead of which my father is making quite a fortune out of it, Sam."

"Ay, I s'pose so, my lad, but fortuns aren't everything. It makes him
look worried, it do, and he've give up his garden, as is a bad sign. I
don't like to see a man give up his garden. It means weeds."

"Well, then, why don't you hoe them up, Sam?" I said sharply.

"Hoe 'em up, lad? I can't put a hoe in his mind, can I? That's where
the weeds grows, my dear lad. Why, he never takes no interest in his
guns now, and if I hadn't set to this morning to scour 'em out and give
'em a regular good cleaning, where would they have been when the French
come?"

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

DOWN THE SILVER MINE.

I left Sam picking out the touch-holes with a piece of wire, walked
across the high ground of the wind-swept moor and descended into the
Gap, a well-beaten track now marking the way.

It was too rough for wheels, but filled with the heavy hoof-marks of
donkeys, which were used largely for carrying wood, charcoal, and
sea-coal to the mine; and as I stood up by the spot where years before
Bob Chowne, Bigley, and I had blown up the big stone and set it rolling
down into the valley, it was wonderful what a change had taken place.

Where we had swept the side of the ravine clear with an avalanche of
rock, there had now sprung up quite a tiny village built of the rough
stones dug from the mine. There was a large water-wheel slowly turning
and sending down the water led to it from above, in company with that
which it pumped out of the mine, all thick and discoloured, in quite a
torrent to the beautiful little stream below, which now ran turbid and
in which the trout were all dead.

There was a row of stoutly-built sheds, and a big place with a high
chimney where the ore was smelted. Then there were offices, and a
building where the purified metal was passed through another furnace,
and in addition a place where the metal was kept.

There seemed a total alteration in the place till I directed my eyes
towards the sea, where all appeared to be unchanged. There were the two
cottages--Binnacle Bill's, with some newly washed white garments hanging
over the rocks; and Jonas Uggleston's, with its stone sheds and
outbuildings bristling with spars and wreck-wood that had been thrown
up, and with nets and sails spread out to dry.

Beyond lay his lugger; and the boat drawn up on the beach, suggesting to
my mind the horrors of tha