, that spun and yet was motionless, in the very
middle of the floor, while all the rest of the room grew suddenly
dimmed.

Zeb with a gasp drew his eyes away for a second and glanced around.
Fiddlers and guests seemed ghostly after the fierce light he had been
gazing on. He looked along the pale faces to the place where Ruby
stood. She, too, glanced up, and their eyes met.

What he saw fetched a sob from his throat. Then something on the floor
caught his attention: something bright, close by his feet.

Between his out-spread legs, as it seemed, a thin streak of silver was
creeping along the flooring. He rubbed his eyes, and looked again.

He was straddling across a stream of molten metal.

As Zeb caught sight of this, the stranger twirled, leapt a foot in the
air, and came down smartly on the final note, with a click of his heels.
The music ceased abruptly.

A storm of clapping broke out, but stopped almost on the instant: for
the stranger had flung an arm out towards the hearth-stone.

"A mine--a mine!"

The white streak ran hissing from the heart of the fire, where a clod of
earth rested among the ashen sticks.

"Witchcraft!" muttered one or two of the guests, peering forward with
round eyes.

"Fiddlestick-end! I put the clod there myself. 'Tis _lead!_"

"Lead?"

"Ay, naybours all," broke in Farmer Tresidder, his bald head bedewed
with sweat, "I don't want to abash 'ee, Lord knows; but 'tis trew as
doom that I be a passing well-to-do chap. I shudn' wonder now"--and
here he embraced the company with a smile, half pompous and half timid--
"I shudn' wonder if ye was to see me trottin' to Parlyment House in a
gilded coach afore Michaelmas--I be so tremenjous rich, by all
accounts."

"You'll excoose my sayin' it, Farmer," spoke up Old Zeb out of the awed
silence that followed, "for doubtless I may be thick o' hearin', but did
I, or did I not, catch 'ee alludin' to a windfall o' wealth?"

"You did."

"You'll excoose me sayin' it, Farmer; but was it soberly or pleasantly,
honest creed or light lips, down-right or random, 'out o' the heart the
mouth speaketh' or wantonly and in round figgers, as it might happen to
a man filled with meat and wine?"

"'Twas the cold trewth."

"By what slice o' fortune?"

"By a mine, as you might put it: or, as between man an' man, by a mine
o' lead."

"Farmer, you're either a born liar or the darlin' o' luck."

"Aye: I feel it. I feel that overpowerin'ly."