"Every thing!" exclaimed Geoffrey. "Let me see all the workings, and what sort of stuff you are sending up." "Why, you've been down a mine before, sir?" said the manager, curiously, and he gazed inquiringly in Geoffrey's face with a look of suspicion, gradually growing plainer; but he remained very civil, and led the way through the maze of passages through which for many a generation the ore had been picked out--laboriously hewn out of the solid rock as the veins of tin were patiently followed. Every now and then some dark, echoing gallery struck off at right angles, till Geoffrey felt, as he stumbled on, that a stranger would soon lose his way in such a terrible labyrinth, if not his life through falling down one of the well-like pits yawning here and there at his feet. Sometimes the way had a lofty roof, and the floor was clear; sometimes they had to stoop and wade through mud and water, and crawl round buttresses of rock to avoid a fall, or to step from sleeper to sleeper of a very primitive tramway. "Let me see," said the manager. "Amos Pengelly ought to be somewhere about here. Wait a minute, and let's try if we can hear him." There were only a few distant echoing noises to be heard, as they stood in the midst of that black darkness, their candles just shedding a halo of light round them, and casting grotesque shadows of their forms upon the glistening walls, and they once more groped more than walked along, Geoffrey pausing now and again, though, to examine with his light the various tokens of minerals that could be seen cropping out on wall and roof, to all of which actions the guide gave an impatient shrug. "They don't mean any thing," he said. "We've pretty well worked the old place out. There's Amos!" Geoffrey turned from the place he was examining, and could hear a confused sound; but after journeying on for about a hundred yards the manager stopped and touched his arm. They had just reached a low side passage, at the end of which there was a faint glow, and there, keeping time to the clicking sharp strokes of a pick, came the sounds of a rich tenor voice, whose owner seemed to be throwing his whole soul into what he was singing. "Hal--le--hal--le--lu--i--jah. Hal--le--hal--le--lu--i--jah." And so on slowly, every other syllable being accompanied by a stroke of the pick. Then, as the verse of the old-fashioned anthem being sung came to an end, there was a pause, the light seemed to be shifted, and the singer began again, but this time choosing Luther's hymn as an accompaniment to the strokes of his pick. "Here's a gentleman come to see you, Amos! Creep out, my lad; we can't get in to you."