e?'

'The doctor told my father, and me too, sir, that we must give up
mining, or die of decline: so he came up here, to a sister of his
that was married to the squire's gardener, and here he died; and the
squire, God bless him and forgive him, took a fancy to me, and made
me under-keeper. And I loved the life, for it took me among the
woods and the rivers, where I could think of the Brazils, and fancy
myself back again. But mustn't talk of that--where God wills is all
right. And it is a fine life for reading and thinking, a
gamekeeper's, for it's an idle life at best. Now that's over,' he
added, with a sigh, 'and the Lord has fulfilled His words to me,
that He spoke the first night that ever I heard a stone-plover cry.'

'What on earth can you mean?' asked Lancelot, deeply interested.

'Why, sir, it was a wild, whirling gray night, with the air full of
sleet and rain, and my father sent me over to Redruth town to bring
home some trade or other. And as I came back I got blinded with the
sleet, and I lost my way across the moors. You know those Cornish
furze-moors, sir?'

'No.'

'Well, then, they are burrowed like a rabbit-warren with old mine-
shafts. You can't go in some places ten yards without finding
great, ghastly black holes, covered in with furze, and weeds, and
bits of rotting timber; and when I was a boy I couldn't keep from
them. Something seemed to draw me to go and peep down, and drop
pebbles in, to hear them rattle against the sides, fathoms below,
till they plumped into the ugly black still water at the bottom.
And I used to be always after them in my dreams, when I was young,
falling down them, down, down, all night long, till I woke
screaming; for I fancied they were hell's mouth, every one of them.
And it stands to reason, sir; we miners hold that the lake of fire
can't be far below. For we find it grow warmer, and warmer, and
warmer, the farther we sink a shaft; and the learned gentlemen have
proved, sir, that it's not the blasting powder, nor the men's
breaths, that heat the mine.'

Lancelot could but listen.

'Well, sir, I got into a great furze-croft, full of deads (those are
the earth-heaps they throw out of the shafts), where no man in his
senses dare go forward or back in the dark, for fear of the shafts;
and the wind and the snow were so sharp, they made me quite stupid
and sleepy; and I knew if I stayed there I should be frozen to
death, and