"Spawn, why didn't you tell me you were a producer of quicksilver?" I shot him a sharp glance. "You are, aren't you?" It took him by surprise, but he recovered himself instantly. "Yes. Are you interested?" I tried another shot. "What surprised me was that a wealthy mine owner--you are, aren't you?--should bother to keep an unprofitable hotel. Why bother with it, Spawn?" I thought I knew the answer: he wanted Nareda's visitors under his eyes. "That is a pleasure." There was irony in his tone. "I am a lonesome man. I like--interesting companionship, such as yours, young Grant." It was on my tongue to hint at his daughter. But I thought better of it. "I am going to the mine now," he said abruptly. "Would you like to come?" "Yes," I smiled. "Thanks." * * * * * I wanted to see his mine. But that he should be eager to show it, surprised me. I wondered what purpose he could have in that. I had a hint of it later; for when we took his little autocar and slid up the winding road into the bloated crags towering on the slope behind Nareda, he told me calmly: "I shall have to put you in charge of my mine commander. I am busy elsewhere this afternoon. You will see the mine just as well without me." He added. "I must go to the Government House: President Markes wants a report on my recent production." So that was what Perona had told him over the audiphone just before our noonday meal? It was an inferno of shadows and glaring lights, this underground cavern. As modern mining activities go, it was small and primitive. No more than a dozen men were here, beside the sweating pudgy mine commander who was my guide. A voluble fellow; of what original nationality I could not determine. We stood watching the line of carts dumping the ore onto the endless lifting-belt. It went a hundred feet or so up and out of the cavern's ascending shaft, to fall with a clatter into the bins above the smelter. "Rich ore," I said. "Isn't it?" The cinnabar ran like thick blood-red veins in the rock. "Rich," said the mine commander. "That it is. Rich. But who does it make rich? Only Spawn, not me." He waved his arms, airing his grievance with which for an hour past he had regaled me. "Only Spawn. For me, a dole each week." The smelter was in a stone building--one of a small group of mine houses which stood in a cauldron depression above excavations. Rounded domes of rock towered above them. The sun, even at this tri-noon hour, was gone behind the heights above us. The murky shadows of night were gathering, the mists of the Lowlands settling. The tube-lights of the mine, strung between small metal poles, winked on like bleary eyes. "Of a day soon I will fling this job to hell--" * * * * *