"Well, nothing except a gatepost over there in Stone Close." "That's just it. It was while I was digging a pit to sink that post in that I struck the back of the lode." "And you say it's rich in tin?" "Very. It intersects the big Helvin lode at that point, and the junction makes for wealth. There'll be a fortune made out of this little farm some day--not out of what grows on the surface, but out of what is dug up from underground." "And in which direction does the lode run?" "Due east and west. We are standing on it now, and it passes under the house." "Then it passes under Peter Ladock's farm also?" Ralph questioned. And he turned and looked over the boundary hedge across their neighbour's farm. "Ay; but the lode's no use out there," David said. "Why?" "Well, you see, 'tisn't mineral-bearing strata, that's all. I dug a pit just where you are standing, and came upon the lode two feet below the surface. But there's no tin in it here scarcely. It's the same lode that the spring comes out of down in the delf, and I've sampled it there. But all along that high ridge where it cuts through the Helvin it's richer than anything I know in this part of the county." "But the tin might give out as you sink." "It might, but it would be something unheard of, if it did. If I know anything about mining--and I think I know a bit--that lode will be twenty per cent. richer a hundred fathoms down than it is at the surface." "Oh, well!" Ralph said, with a sigh, "rich or poor, it can make no difference to us." "Perhaps not--perhaps not," David said wistfully. "But it may be valuable to somebody some day. I have passed the secret to you. Some day you may pass it on to another. The future is with God," and he drew a long breath, and turned his face toward home, which in a few hours would be his home no more. Ralph turned his face in another direction. "I think I will go on to St. Goram," he said, "and see how they are getting on with the cottage. You see we have to move into it to-morrow." "As you will," David answered, and he strode away across the stubble. Ralph struck across the fields into Dingley Bottom, and then up the gentle slant toward Treliskey Plantation. When he reached the stile he rested for several minutes, and recalled the meeting and conversation between Dorothy Hamblyn and himself. How long ago it seemed, and how much had happened since then. Though he loathed the very name of Hamblyn, he was, nevertheless, thankful that the squire's daughter was getting slowly better. She had been seen once or twice in St. Goram in a bath-chair, drawn by a donkey. "Looking very pale and so much older," the villagers said.