They will be too compromised to back when they find themselves in the wrong place.’ ’But how about the salting?’ ’There are various sorts of salting. You only know one sort. You have seen Polpluggan salted with tin ore brought from elsewhere, and basketfuls drawn out of the shaft that had been previously put in. That is one sort of salting, and I allow that with gold this would come expensive. I shall have to manage more economically. My dear boy, when fools are hungering to be deceived, they are not particular about the meat that feeds their folly. They don’t inquire if the mutton comes of rotten sheep.’ ’How shall you float it?’ ’Nothing easier. Let us find Ophir, and the Reverend Israel will do the rest. He conducts a religious paper, entitled "The Western Cornucopia," much read by those of his persuasion, and throughout the West of England. I like that word persuasion, Sampy. When I hear a man talk of his persuasion, I feel that he is persuadable to any sort of suicide. Now, let me get my truck on Israel’s rails, and it will run down by the law of gravity.’ ’But where will you light on Ophir?’ ’I do not know yet. I am an earnest inquirer, and I have been sitting with the Reverend Flamank many an hour, as solemn as a Quaker, over our Bibles, making it out. I’m hard to believe, he eager to convince. He has no idea that I am leading him on; he believes he is driving me. Now and then, as the light of nature prompts, I throw out a suggestion, and he snaps at it enthusiastically, appropriates it, and reproduces it as an original inspiration. Country folks will tell you that every cloud brings with it wind. That is the reverse of the fact. It is the wind that brings the cloud. So in this case there occurs a little mistake as to which is the impelling power. The Reverend Israel has shown me that the situation of Ophir is pretty accurately indicated. It is said in Scripture that Ophir lies between Mesha and a mountain in the East called Sephar. Now, with my incenting, the Reverend Flamank has arrived at this—that Mesha is the village of Meshaw, near South Molton, and that Sephar is Sheepstor, which is a mountain due east of Launceston.’ ’It is due south of Meshaw.’ ’Yes, but it is due east of Salem Chapel. People always reckon from where they are themselves. You see the line uniting them passes through Crediton, South Tawton, Cosdon——’ ’By the way, father, Squire Battishill told me he had found a silver lead mine at Upaver.’ ’Upaver!—Upaver!—Ophir! Ophir! Sampy! By the wisdom of Solomon, we have spotted Ophir!’ *CHAPTER XIII.* *CAPTAIN TRECARREL.*