“Very well; and you’ll laugh at this; Matthew will, because it isn’t business-like. What else d’you think I’ve studied this winter? Why, a ballad-book. Hugh Pudsay’s ballad. You’ve heard of Pudsay’s cockleshell-shillings (when you were dandled, maybe), and so had I; but I thought twice. I’m not talking now of his making silver dilly-spoons and selling them for a shilling, and then waking up to it that he might just as well make the shilling. Perhaps he _didn’t_ work a silver mine without patent, and get tripped by some Cope or other, and set off on horse-back for London to save his neck. Perhaps that’s only a song about his getting patent and pardon and meeting the exciseman coming in ten minutes after the fair. But that cockleshell he stamped his shillings with--follow me--it was an escallop, and a mint-mark for that very year of Elizabeth. D’you take me?” James Eastwood was tilted back in his chair, watching the intersecting rings of light on the ceiling; he let the chair slowly down. “D’ye mean, Arthur, you’d mine Back o’ th’ Mooin on th’ chance o’ finding silver?” “We haven’t got quite so far yet,” Monjoy replied, rising from the low stool; and James Eastwood gave a low whistle. Presently Matthew Moon shoved out his lip. “Pshaw! It’s a ballad, Arthur, a ballad,” he said. “What do you say, John?” Monjoy demanded of Raikes in the window-seat. “Tell us some more; it’s grand,” murmured Raikes. “Very well; now take this in. Within this ten years money’s been put up in Lancashire to open Bulmer’s workings again. Reason they didn’t do it, it was blabbed, and the excise pricked up its ears. They prayed for a patent for lead, but that wasn’t what they wanted. They’d have mixed their ores and done the Dutchmen’s trick; but as soon as that pays and the excise wakes up, pff!--it’s a Mine Royal at once.” “If they stopped it in Lancashire, they’d stop it here,” Eastwood said thoughtfully. “In Back o’ th’ Mooin?” said Monjoy, meaningly; and there was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the leaves of the ledger that Matthew Moon turned over at arms-length. Suddenly he closed the ledger with a flap. “Ah, well!” he observed, “then we’ve only to walk there and get it.” Monjoy spoke composedly, ignoring the irony. “I wonder what Matthew would say if he heard my plan for finding it,” he said. “Phew! He’d call _that_ madness!” “Tell us, Arthur,” said Raikes. “Not I! If I don’t find it, I’m fool enough already without that.” Raikes and Eastwood were plainly engaged by the idea, and soon Eastwood ejaculated under his breath: “My God! the risk!” At that Monjoy flung out his arms, displaying his vast chest.