They both soon showed their bents. In the evenings, when work was done, there was little to occupy them. Mr. Appleton’s books were few; they were mainly books on mining and grammars and dictionaries of the local dialects. Robert seized on the former; Lawrence devoted himself to the latter; and their uncle was very well pleased, for each of these studies would prove useful. Their recreations were for the present confined to an occasional game of chess or cards, a still rarer shooting expedition in the hills, and the reading of the rather dilapidated magazines which had come at odd times from India and home. Lawrence missed his cricket, and Bob his golf; but in spite of what Mr. Appleton had said about the impossibility of using the aeroplane when it should arrive, they both looked forward privately to trying their wings by and by. Lawrence soon became popular with the natives. He had a turn for languages, and managed to pick up quickly a little Turki and scraps of the other tongues spoken by the very mixed crowd that constituted the mining staff. Robert had not the same quickness in learning languages, but he made himself useful on the engineering side. He had been accustomed to spend part of his holidays in the engine shops of the father of one of his schoolfellows, and found his experience valuable. Once, for instance, when there was a breakdown of the somewhat crazy engine that worked the stamping presses, he was able to make the necessary repairs more quickly than Mr. Appleton himself, or the regular engine man, could have done. Mr. Appleton was a very good prospector and an all-round man in general, but he had no particular gift in the direction of mechanics, while the engine man had picked up from his master all he knew. He was a Gurkha, a short, compact little fellow, of hard muscles and a very quick intelligence. His race is more accustomed to military service than to machinery, and Fazl, as this man was named, had never seen a steam engine before he came to the mine. Mr. Appleton had found him wandering half starved in Turkestan two seasons before, and out of sheer kindness of heart put him on as cleaner. Some time after, the Mohammedan Bengali who had hitherto driven the engine asked leave to go home and bury his grandmother, and Fazl was promoted to his place. The Bengali, of course, never returned, and Fazl was still engine man. One evening after supper Mr. Appleton said-- "Don’t get your books yet, boys; I want to show you something." He placed a Bunsen burner on the table, and brought a blowpipe and a piece of charcoal from a cupboard. Then he took from his pocket a small lump of ore, which he laid on the charcoal with a little powdered carbonate of soda, and proceeded to treat in the Bunsen flame. The boys watched his experiment curiously. After a time they saw a bright bead form itself on the surface of the ore. Mr. Appleton laid down the blowpipe. "What do you make of that?" he said.