’John, tell me,’ she looked at him very earnestly, and with her expressive and sweet face full of compassion; ’tell me—have you no one then to love you?’ He shook his head. ’No one.’ ’At Welltown—no one?’ ’My nurse. No one else.’ ’How lonely in the world you must be!’ ’Utterly,’ he answered. Then she brightened up, and, dashing some tears from her eyes, held out her hands to him laughingly across the glowing hearth. ’There, there, poor boy! We have been talking of Cornwall. There you may be alone and unloved, but here, in old Devon, under the shadow of Cosdon, you have a home, and hearts that care a great deal for you; there is my father, here am I, then there is Joyce, and lastly my white cat! See! he is up on your knee this moment. There! never again say that you are solitary and unloved. It is not true, it is utterly false. Good-night, Cousin John! sweet sleep, happy dreams, and a glad awaking to you!’ *CHAPTER XLVIII.* *TWO BEQUESTS.* Next morning John Herring went early to Upaver. The wheel was up, and the leat had been cut. But the wall supporting the axle of the wheel was improperly built, and the leat was improperly levelled. Much that the contractor had undertaken to do had been left undone, and most that he had done was done so badly that it had to be done over again. Herring called for the day-books, and soon saw that the men working for day wage had taken three days to do what might have been done in one, and that was work which need not have been done at all. Ophir had demoralised the entire neighbourhood. The object aimed at there had been to make a great display of activity, but to produce nothing. What had been begun at Ophir, the workmen supposed was to continue at Upaver. Herring rang the bell of the mine, and called the men together. He dismissed the foreman on the spot—that civil and intelligent foreman whom Mr. Battishill esteemed so highly. He told the men that henceforth he would be their captain; he would be at Upaver every day, and would set every man his work, and what he set each man he expected him to execute. A fair day’s work for a fair wage, and no payment for idle hours. Those who disliked his terms might go elsewhere in quest of new Ophirs. There was one subsidiary matter he wished to speak of. Old Grizzly Cobbledick was much at the mine, and was treated by the men. He disapproved of this. He would not have the old man given drink and made sport of there. If he would work, he should be given work; if he were determined to get drunk, he must get his drink elsewhere. Then Herring examined the adit. Much the same story there as outside. The work had been gone on with anyhow, the ore thrown out with the cable.