"I happen to hold the mineral rights of the Crudel valley in rather a queer, roundabout way," he replied. "They went with a property my uncle had bought in Shropshire--but that is beside the point. Naturally, with all the fuss there has been about the slate quarries lately, I have had to know something as to the lie of the land. When we first met, I was down to see it, so there is nothing wonderful in my knowledge." Ted stared at him. "By George! Then it is you who put a spoke in the wheel of that new company?" Aura looked at him also, and with quick disapproval. "Is it you who have thrown all the people out of work?" she asked. "Do you know some of the children haven't enough to eat,--at least," she added, her look having brought her, she scarcely knew why, a vague doubt, "Martha told me that the people were getting up a subscription for them." Ned laughed derisively and shrugged his shoulders. "You won't understand what I mean, but there is a general election due next year. The men have had other employment offered them; if they won't accept it, that is their own fault." "But I don't understand your objection----" began Ted. "Don't you?" interrupted Lord Blackborough. "I think that must be because you don't know good slate from bad." They had passed on by this time into that most desolate of all places on God's earth, a valley of unworked slate quarries, a valley desecrated by man's needs, yet needed not by man. Seamed, scarred, riven until scarcely a blade of gracious grass remained on what had once been soft, sweet sheep-bite set with heather, shadowed by dense bracken thickets. Great moraines of débris, not rounded by long æons of slow yet certain grinding in the mill of God, but fresh, crude, angled, from the hand of man, usurped the valley now on this side, now on that, turning the very roadway, bordered by rusty rails, to their pleasure. A mountain stream, released from long slavery, sped--exultantly free--past the low congeries of differently pitched roofs supported by iron pilasters, beneath which cogwheels and bands, levers and distributors stood immovable, rusted into silence. Hanging halfway up a stiff incline of shale, an empty truck hung rusted to the rails. Another, full of split slate squared, holed, ready for homestead or granary, stood in the wide stacking-yard where thousands and thousands of these same leaves of slate, looking like huge books, were ranged in orderly piles. How many homes, how many churches, how many barns and factories might not have been roofed in by these piles waiting idly? For what? For money. Ned Blackborough stooped down and picked up a slate which had fallen on the truck-way. It snapped between his fingers, and with a laugh he flung it aside. "Bad stuff!" he said, "and that is better than most. I tell you that this valley, which is a valley of desolation now, has been a valley of dishonesty from the very beginning."