The next visitor was young Sampson. He came in fuming, and asked the Captain his intentions. He was Orange’s brother. It was his duty to see that she was treated fairly, and, by God, he would do his duty. He was not going to let a militia captain play fast and loose with the poor girl’s affections, and possibly blight her entire future by his heartless desertion. Trecarrel listened to him with the utmost coolness. He had expected this visit, and knew what its character would be. ’Sampson the little and weak,’ he said, ’your father has sent you here to try what bluster will effect. May I trouble you to convey to him a message from me, and say that the effects are nil?’ ’Are you going to desert Orange? If you are, I’ll shoot you.’ ’No, you won’t,’ said the Captain. ’In the first place, I am not going to desert Orange; and in the second place, if I were, the utmost you would do would be to try to get money compensation out of me, and that would be like squeezing a stone for milk. In one particular I am like Ophir. If you want to extract gold out of me, you must first put it into me.’ Sampson’s face became mottled, and his eyes, with a startled expression in them, turned to the Captain, but, seeing his eyes fixed inquiringly on him, his fell. Trecarrel chuckled, and drew the sheets over his head. Presently he looked out again. Sampson was at the window killing flies. He had his back turned to the bed, and was stabbing at the flies with the pin of his stock. ’I have placed two alternatives before your father,’ said the Captain: ’I will marry Orange to-morrow if he will comply with either. Either let him give me a fair chance of testing the ore of Ophir, and satisfy myself that the mine is genuine, or let him pay five thousand pounds into the hands of a third party, to be held till the marriage is concluded.’ ’I refuse—I refuse each alternative, in his name and my own,’ said young Sampson, stabbing at a fly with such fury that he broke a pane in the window. ’There goes eighteen pence,’ said the Captain, ’beside letting a current of cold air in on me. Leave the room. I need repose. My indisposition gains upon me.’ The next to visit Captain Trecarrel was John Herring. Herring was not very willing to undertake the obligation the Captain was desirous of forcing upon him: however, he was good-natured, that is, easily imposed on, and in the end he consented to act as the third party, and receive the money into his keeping till the marriage took place. On the morrow old Tramplara came back; he remained some time, and attempted to coax Trecarrel into good humour and the surrender of his ultimatum. Trecarrel especially urged the former of his alternatives, as he perceived that it was eminently distasteful to both the old man and his son. Tramplara went away, refusing both alternatives.