Well, Sir Rupert easily enough cozened my grandfather out of it. There was water there, he said, and his cattle had but brackish bog-pools. My grandfather was for giving it to him, but Sir Rupert would not have it so, and the deeds were regularly made out, signed, and delivered. Then, too late, it was discovered why Sir Rupert wanted the land. Why, underneath its docks and dandelions it was one great seam of copper! The copper mines made the De Lacys rich and the Brandons poor. When grandfather discovered how he had been cheated, and that there was no remedy, he began to sink for copper on his own account. People said that by means of paid agents Sir Rupert fostered in my grandfather what soon became a craze. How many thousands of pounds were poured into those wretched pits over there towards Angry I would not like to say. Sometimes copper was found in small quantities, placed there, people said, by Sir Rupert's agents. Such finds only set my grandfather to harder and more feverish endeavour, but they all ended in nothing. The one seam, and that apparently inexhaustible, was on Whinny Waste, as the No Man's Land was called. While my grandfather was ruining himself and future Brandons, Sir Rupert was heaping up gold. But now the mines are no longer his, for a few years ago he sold them for a great sum to an English company. People say it was because he had a profound contempt for the business capacity of his grandson, a young fellow of whom we see nothing in this country, his youth having been spent with his mother's people in an English rectory. Indeed, Castle Angry would have been no place for a young life to grow up in; and the young man may be like his father, about whose marriage Sir Rupert was so furious that he never laid eyes on him afterwards. Anyhow, he must be the better for not having known, in the tender days of his youth, his terrible old grandfather and James Gaskin. CHAPTER II. WE BRANDONS. Within Brandon walls we are out of the world. We know nothing of the copper mines, except that sometimes we meet a shock-headed miner or two when we are on our way to the village. The sulphur-coloured washings enter Brandon river some miles away, and are carried out to sea. None of the smoke or smell of the mines is blown our way. In my heart I am glad that no copper was ever found on Brandon Mountain. I could not bear to see his beautiful blue and purple sides disfigured by the brimstone of the pit, whatever of gold it might mean to us. We keep much within our walls, and fortunately we have no lack of room to stretch our legs. Our neighbours live at long distances from us, and though they would be kind, no doubt, because we are Brandons, we couldn't keep up with them in any way.