’You have dug out the quartz yourself and followed the entire process, to the last washing and sifting. Will not that content you?’ ’I brought home with me some of the auriferous stone, and crushed it myself, and washed it myself, but not a particle of gold was there.’ ’Simply because you took pieces in which there was no gold. Gold is not so common as hornblend.’ ’Nor, apparently, as discernible in the stone. Look here, father-in-law that want to be.’ ’I won’t be spoken to in this style.’ ’You want me to marry Orange, do you not?’ ’I do not care a penny about you. All I care for is poor Orange, and her feelings.’ ’You are ready to pay me five thousand pounds for taking Orange off your hands, are you not?’ asked the imperturbable Captain. ’I am ready to pay you five thousand pounds as her jointure, because she is my daughter, whom I dearly love, and I wish to provide for her comfort and happiness in the future when I am dead and forgotten.’ ’And you were thinking only of her comfort and happiness when you offered us those Patagonian bonds,’ said Trecarrel. ’Fortunately, I was equally interested in the dear creature’s comfort and happiness, and in her interest I declined them.’ ’Have done with those Patagonian bonds,’ said Tramplara, impatiently. ’You will bring my white hairs with exasperation to the grave. I shall go down stairs, and leave you to soak in bed. Do you intend to lie here for a twelve-month? I do not believe you are seriously ill.’ ’Seriously indisposed is what I said,’ answered the Captain. ’You have done this sort of thing before,’ said old Tramplara, very hot and angry; ’I have heard of you. Ridiculous! not like a man.’ Trecarrel was wholly unmoved. He turned round in his bed with his face to the wall. The old man stamped about the room, swearing and uttering his opinions freely, without eliciting a word from the Captain. After a while he cooled down, finding that his wrath and remonstrances were ineffectual, and he seated himself on a chair by the bedside. ’Be reasonable, Captain,’ he said. ’What is the drift of this farce?’ Trecarrel turned round in bed, and faced him with perfect equanimity in his handsome features. ’I say, Trampleasure, the second Solomon who draws gold out of Ophir, I give it up. How do you manage it?’ The fiery flush again came into the old man’s face. ’There, there, I do not want to anger you,’ said Trecarrel. ’I have a proposal to make to you, father-in-law _in nubibus_! Let me go with you into the mine. You shall indicate to me the auriferous vein, and I will pick out pieces and submit them to you. Those about which you are doubtful shall be cast aside; those you approve I will retain. I will pound them myself, and wash them myself.’ ’Where—in our works?’