"I have been here for a year," he answered. "I am, as a matter of fact, a mining engineer--hence these clothes! I belong to a little private syndicate of friends who are opening up a disused tin-mine, on the moor not far away. Ah, here is the landlord! Trewhella, this gentleman wishes to speak to you." And then to me: "Good-morning, sir. No doubt, if you come here, I and my friends will see something of you. We are mostly public-school and University men ourselves, and we often look in here of an evening after our day's work." He waved his hand and went out into the sunshine. CHAPTER X SIR JOHN CUSTANCE COMES UPON THE HOUSE OF HELZEPHRON Mr. Trewhella was an elderly Cornishman, with welcoming manners, the native shrewdness of his race, but without guile. We got on famously from the word "go." He had three bedrooms and a large sitting-room to let. His wife, who had driven into St. Ives, was, he asserted, a good cook. As for Thumbwood, he could wait on us and live with the landlord and his wife. Finally, there was an empty barn which would hold our car very comfortably. "And what would you be thinking of paying, zur?" asked Mr. Trewhella. "I shall leave that to you. I may tell you that the gentleman I am preparing for his Oxford examination is wealthy. He is a Japanese nobleman, and as long as you make us comfortable ..." This had the desired effect. The landlord became expansive in his slow way, and showed me all over the premises of his quaint and rambling dwelling. It was a wild and fantastic spot, an ancient haunt of smugglers and wreckers, I learnt. The back-yard opened straight into the short pneumatic turf above the cliffs, the brink of which was not more than two hundred yards away. Here the stream, which flowed past the inn, descended in a series of miniature cataracts to a tiny cove of deep-green water, almost enclosed by two towering precipices, crowned with jagged spires and pinnacles of rock. There was a little scimitar of golden sand far down at the water's edge, and the scene was one of savage grandeur that I have rarely known surpassed in all my travels. As he stood on the height and looked down, I saw something which seemed strangely out of place. A line of street rails, with wooden rollers at intervals between them, fell at a dizzy angle from a spot some ten yards away on the turf, ending abruptly on the level, and in front of a smallish hut of corrugated iron. "What is the rail for?" I asked. "Surely you don't haul the boats"--there were two of them lying on the beach--"right up to the top of the cliff! It must be two hundred and fifty feet!" "Nigher three hundred, zur. No. Them rails belong to bring up machinery and stores for Tregeraint Mine by Carne Zerran. They do come by sea in a lil' steamboat. 'Tes more convenient so. There be a lil' oil engine in that shed to haul 'em up in trucks. I let the land, for 'tes all mine down-along, and they do pay me ten pound a year."