"What have you got in here, Father Prawle?" said Geoffrey, at length, after sitting for some time watching the strange effects of light and shadow, as the old man forced the boat along by thrusting the boat-hook against the roof or sides. "Nothing," said the old man, laconically. "Then why have we come?" "Wait and see." "All right," said Geoffrey, and, leaning back, he began to think of Rhoda, and of the news he had heard, wondering the while whether she would ever be brave enough to do him justice, and frankly own that she was wrong. Then he thought of her being poor, and, looking at it in one light, he did not feel very sorry, though he felt a kind of pang to think that she would miss so many of the old refinements of life. "Which--_vide_ self--any one can very well do without," he said, half aloud. "What?" growled his guide. "I was only muttering, Father Prawle. How much farther are we going?" "Not far." The old man forced the boat along for quite another hundred yards, and then, taking hold of the painter, he leaped upon a rock and secured the rope. "Jump out, and bring the lamp and the compass, my lad," said the old fellow, in his rough, grim way; and on Geoffrey landing he said to the old man, sharply,-- "Is there ore in here?" "Nothing but some poor tin," was the reply. "But look there, my lad. The boat won't go up that narrow bit, but that runs on at least a hundred fathom, for I've waded as far as that." "What, up that narrow hole?" said Geoffrey, as he peered along a place that looked a mere crack in the rock floored with water. "Yes, up that narrow place. Now what do you say?" "I don't say any thing," replied Geoffrey. "Why have we come here?" "Bah! Take your compass, lad. Which way does that bit of a cut run?" "Nor-east by east," said Geoffrey, holding the compass flat. "Well, suppose you drive right through that nat'ral adit, as you may call it, for thirty or forty, or p'r'aps fifty fathom, what would you hit?" "I see your meaning now," cried Geoffrey, excitedly. "Of course, yes, we must strike one of the galleries in Wheal Carnac which run under the promontory from the other side." "And if you do drive through, what then?" chuckled the old man. "Why, you'll have an adit that will clear the water off as fast as it comes in." "To be sure you will," said Prawle. "But only to a certain level," said Geoffrey, despondently. "It is of no use, Prawle; the tin would be fathoms below." "Damn the tin, boy," cried the old man, excitedly; and, as they stood on a narrow shelf of rock there, he gripped Geoffrey fiercely by the arm. "Look here, you, Master Trethick, no man ever did me an ill turn but what I paid him off, and no man ever did me a good turn but I paid him off." "I never did you an ill turn," said Geoffrey.