He was obviously pleased with my interest in his talk. I wondered what he would have said if he had known who I was and why I was there? Under a calm exterior, a professor munching potato pasty! I was filled with a furious excitement. The man's gossip was worth a sovereign a word. Here was, moment by moment, what looked like complete confirmation of our suspicions. And yet, even as I realized this, I realized also how infernally clever the scheme was. Without the clue which Danjuro and myself alone possessed, there was nothing in the world to connect Helzephron and Tregeraint with the business that was ruffling the calm of two continents. It was not my game to ask more direct questions than I could help. It was better to let the racy stream flow on, with a word of comment now and then. I ventured a calculated one now. "Fools and their money are soon parted," said I. "You may say that, zur! And they've poured out money like water. Electric light, oal sorts o' cases full of new-fangled machinery, and that mystery made about the silly old mine you'd think it was a seam of diamonds." "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, Mr. Trewhella!" I rose from the table as I spoke. "But what you say about a dozen or more gentlemen drinking nearly a bottle of whisky each rather surprises me. I'm no foe to honest enjoyment, but ..." I put on a slight primness of manner, as became the character I sustained. The landlord nodded vigorously. "'Tes so!" he agreed, "and most onusual. They be gentlefolk, sure 'nuff, but shall I tell 'ee what I think?" "What's that?" "I think as most of 'em's dropped out, so to speak. I shouldn't be frightened if as their families didn't have anything to say to 'em, and they've nowhere much else to go. Mr. Helzephron knows what he's about, he do. I judge by a kind o' reckless way they have, 'specially the younger gentlemen. They don't seem to mind about ordinary things same as most. Well, I suppose this fool tin-mining keeps 'em out of mischief." I wondered. When I set out upon the return journey I took another route. I found from the landlord that by skirting the coast for a mile in the direction of St. Ives I could come upon a moorland path that would take me to the little railway-station of St. Erth. I could then catch a train for Penzance. My ostensible reason was to vary my walk, my real one that by this change of plan I should pass by and have a view of Tregeraint Mine and the Manor House. "Not that you'll see much or get close," said Mr. Trewhella. "How is that?" I asked. "I told you that Mr. Helzephron"--apparently the hawk-faced man had dropped his military title in Cornwall--"do make a mystery of his peddling mine. He goes further than that. The mine buildings and the house are surrounded by two fences of barbed-wire and the Manor by a high wall. 'Trespassers,' notice boards belong to say, 'will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law'!" "Well, I shan't attempt to trespass, Mr. Trewhella!"