The old man's irritable voice toned down into a hum like that of a gigantic bee, for Uncle Paul was safe now to be in peace and good temper for a couple of hours at least over the debates in his newspaper, and Mrs Mullion, as unruffled as ever, was already back indoors, thinking over her half-brother's words, and wondering whether they would ever prove true. CHAPTER EIGHT. GEOFFREY MAKES A DISCOVERY. There were plenty of heads thrust out of the granite cottages on either side of the steep way as Geoffrey strode on, ready to give back frank, open look for curious gaze, and to take notice that the people were dark and swarthy; that there were plenty of brown fishing-nets, and blackened corks, and swollen bladders, hanging from the walls, in company with a pair or two of sculls, a hitcher and a mast from some small boat, with now and then what seemed to be a human being split and hung up to dry after the fashion of a haddock, but which proved to be only an oilskin fishing-suit. At one cottage door a huge pair of fisher's boots stood out in the sun, as if they were being worn by some invisible prince or Cornish giant. At another door sat a woman cleaning a long, snaky-looking hake, opposite to a neighbour who was busily counting pilchards, which had evidently been brought up from one of the boats by a big, brown, bluff-looking man, who, from top to toe, seemed as if he had some idea of going into the harlequin profession, so spangled was he with silver scales. "Can I get down to the beach this way?" Geoffrey asked of the latter. "Can 'ee get down to ba-ach this way! Iss my son," said the man, in a sing-song tone; and, after a very steep descent, Geoffrey found himself where he desired to go. Not upon a soft, sandy, or pleasant shingly beach, but upon one literally paved with great masses of rock--black shale, granite, and gneiss--over which the huge Atlantic waves came foaming in stormy weather, rolling and polishing the surface with the rounded boulders, which seemed to average the size of a goodly cheese. Even now the rocky promontory that ran out and sheltered the little place and its tiny harbour was fringed with foaming water as the blue waves came slowly rolling in, to break on the black rocks, run up and fall back in silvery cascades to the heaving sea. Geoffrey's keen eyes scanned the rocks, with their great white veins of milky quartz; running through the beautiful sea-scape on his left, the piled-up rocks upon his right, and then they rested on the grey engine-house upon the promontory--the mark of the great disused unsuccessful mine that had been pointed out to him as Wheal Carnac.