The moment that Quarm entered she dropped the knitting on which she was engaged; a flash of pleasure, a gleam of colour, mounted to eyes and cheeks; she half rose with timidity and hesitation, but as Quarm continued in eager conversation with Pepperill, and did not notice her, she sank back into her sitting posture, the colour faded from her cheek, her eyes fell, and a quiver of the lips and contraction of the mouth indicated distress and pain. “How is it possible to turn mud into gold?” asked Pepperill. “Wait till I have coined my oak and I will do it.” “I can understand oaks. The timber is worth something, and the bark something, and the tops sell for firewood; but mud--mud is mud.” “Well, it is mud. Let me light my pipe. I can’t talk without my ’baccy.” Jason put a spill to the fire, seated himself on a stool by the hearth, ignited his pipe, and then, turning his eye about, caught sight of the girl. “Hallo, little Toad!” said he; “how are you?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he returned to the mud. “Look here, Pasco, the mud is good for nothing where it is.” “No. It is a nuisance. It chokes the channel. I had a deal of trouble with the last coal-barge; she sank so deep I thought she’d be smothered and never got in.” “That’s just it. You would pay something to have it cleared--dredged right away.” “I don’t know about that. The expense would be great.” “You need not pay a half-crown. It isn’t India only whose shining fountains roll down their golden sands. It is Devonshire as well, which pours the river Teign clear as crystal out of its Dartmoor reservoir, and which is here ready to empty its treasures into my pockets and yours. But we must dispose of Brimpts oak first.” “I’d like to know how you are going to do anything with mud.” “What is mud but clay in a state of slobber? Now, hearken to me, brother-in-law. I have been where the soil is all clay, clay that would grow nothing but moss and rushes, and was not worth more than five shillings an acre, fit for nothing but for letting young stock run on. That is out Holsworthy way. Well, a man with the philosopher’s stone in his head, Goldsworthy Gurney, he cut a canal from Bude harbour right through this arrant clay land. With what result? The barges travel up from Bude laden with sand. The farmers use the sand over their clay fields, and the desert blossoms as the rose. Land that was worth four shillings went up to two pound ten, and in places near the canal to five pounds. The sand on the seashore is worthless. The clay inland is worthless, but the sand and clay married breed moneys, moneys, my boy--golden moneys.” “That is reasonable enough,” said Pasco Pepperill, “but it don’t apply here. We are on the richest of red soil, that wants no dressing, so full of substance is it in itself. Besides, the mud is nothing but our red soil in a state of paste.”