r your sake I would not," I answered; "but for your daughter's sake
I will; the daughter whom you left to starve so pitifully in the
wilderness."

The man stared at me with his pale gray eyes, whose colour was lost from
candle light; and his voice as well as his body shook, while he cried,--

"It is a lie, man. No daughter, and no son have I. Nor was ever child of
mine left to starve in the wilderness. You are too big for me to tackle,
and that makes you a coward for saying it." His hands were playing with
a pickaxe helve, as if he longed to have me under it.

"Perhaps I have wronged you, Simon," I answered very softly; for the
sweat upon his forehead shone in the smoky torchlight; "if I have, I
crave your pardon. But did you not bring up from Cornwall a little maid
named 'Gwenny,' and supposed to be your daughter?"

"Ay, and she was my daughter, my last and only child of five; and for
her I would give this mine, and all the gold will ever come from it."

"You shall have her, without either mine or gold; if you only prove to
me that you did not abandon her."

"Abandon her! I abandon Gwenny!" He cried with such a rage of scorn,
that I at once believed him. "They told me she was dead, and crushed,
and buried in the drift here; and half my heart died with her. The
Almighty blast their mining-work, if the scoundrels lied to me!"

"The scoundrels must have lied to you," I answered, with a spirit fired
by his heat of fury: "the maid is living and with us. Come up; and you
shall see her."

"Rig the bucket," he shouted out along the echoing gallery; and then he
fell against the wall, and through the grimy sack I saw the heaving of
his breast, as I have seen my opponent's chest, in a long hard bout of
wrestling. For my part, I could do no more than hold my tongue and look
at him.

Without another word we rose to the level of the moors and mires;
neither would Master Carfax speak, as I led him across the barrows. In
this he was welcome to his own way, for I do love silence; so little
harm can come of it. And though Gwenny was no beauty, her father might
be fond of her.

So I put him in the cow-house (not to frighten the little maid), and
the folding shutters over him, such as we used at the beestings; and he
listened to my voice outside, and held on, and preserved himself. For
now he would have scooped the earth, as cattle do at yearning-time, and
as meekly and as patiently, to have his child restored to him. Not to
m