hatever it might end in.

For when this poor man left his daughter, asleep as he supposed, and
having his food, and change of clothes, and Sunday hat to see to, he
meant to return in an hour or so, and settle about her sustenance in
some house of the neighbourhood. But this was the very thing of all
things which the leaders of the enterprise, who had brought him up from
Cornwall, for his noted skill in metals, were determined, whether by
fair means or foul, to stop at the very outset. Secrecy being their main
object, what chance could there be of it, if the miners were allowed to
keep their children in the neighbourhood? Hence, on the plea of feasting
Simon, they kept him drunk for three days and three nights, assuring him
(whenever he had gleams enough to ask for her) that his daughter was as
well as 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