William Massarene had looked at the shining particles on the grass-roots and had known immediately what it was. “’Tis a rubbishy slate there is in these parts,” he said, with great presence of mind. “Where that slate’s found ground’s always poor and no good for man or beasts.” Robert Airley had believed him; he was a young man of good faith and weak brain. In the winter which followed on that conversation all things went ill with him: his cow died, his two pigs strayed into the scrub and were never recovered, his young wife was pregnant and ill; the violent blasts of those parts unroofed his shingle house and terrified her almost out of her wits. He took her down into the township of Kerosene and timidly asked Massarene to lend him a little money on his ground. “I won’t lend on it,” said Massarene. “I told you ’tis all shale and slate. I’ll buy it for thirty dollars. Not a cent more nor less. The slate’s the only good thing on it, and that must be quarried, and you haven’t means to quarry.” Robert Airley knew that this was the truth as regarded his fortunes, he had not a cent in his pocket; he had nothing to get food or lodging; his young wife in her first labor pains was moaning that she would never go back to that wilderness. He was so tormented and worried and out of heart that he closed with Massarene’s offer and sold his claim to the bit of land out and out, and settled in the township as a mechanic, which he had been at home. Three years later he heard that mining had been begun on his old claim and that a fine vein of tin had been found. “You cheated me,” he said to William Massarene. “Not I,” said the fortunate speculator. “I bought your waste land on spec.; I’ve a right to what I find there. And,” he added, with his blackest scowl, stepping close to Airley’s ear, “if you dare say a word o’ that sort ever again in all your years, I’ll put two bullets in your numskull of a noddle sure as my name’s Massarene. I aren’t a good un to rouse.” Robert Airley was not a coward, but he was miserably poor, and poverty is apt to be cowardice when it is not desperation.