Reed faced round to him sharply. "Do you object to your job, my man?" he said; "because if so, speak at once, and send down one of the others." "Oh, I don't object," said the man surlily. "I'll go where you won't get them to venture. I was thinking about you." "Then don't think about me, but about your duties." "That's all right enough, sir; only if a regular consulting engineer came down, he'd chip off a bit here, and a bit there, and know directly what a mine's worth. I took stock of this old place last time, and can tell you now without your troubling yourself to go a step farther. 'Sides, I've been down since." "Indeed!" "Oh yes. I'd nothing to do, so it was natural I should come down and have a look of the property I was to take care of." "Well, and what estimate did you set on it--as to value?" said Reed, with a smile. "Oh, about the usual figure," said the man, with a peculiar laugh. "It's worth just as much as you can get out of your shareholders." "Yes?" "That's it, sir; I've not been busy over mines ten years for nothing. Not a penny more. The old folks cleared it out clean enough, all but the patch to the right down yonder." "Then you think the whole thing is a swindle, Mr Sturgess, eh?" "Oh no, sir. I don't say that," replied the man, with a chuckle. "I only say it's a mine as will show up well when it has got all its new machinery. Ought to make a good job for a couple of years for a few people. Shall I show you where you can get a few good specimens? I know of some bits as are pretty rich." "No, thank you," said Reed quietly. "I'm not a regular consulting engineer, my man, and we came down to do a good day's exploring. I want to see the whole of the workings." "Then it'll take you a week, sir." "Very well, then, let it take me a week. Now, then, let's waste no more time." Michael Sturgess uttered a sound something like a grunt, and holding the lantern before him led on along the rocky cavernous passage, which was wonderfully free from fallen stones, the rock having formed endless pillar buttresses and arch-like processes of stalactitic growth, cementing and holding all firmly together. But there was a wonderful sameness as they went on, following the course of what had once been a lode of ore, which had finally been cleared out, leaving its shape in the rock, and forming a tunnel as the ancient miners worked their way. Far down the main gallery of the mine Sturgess paused by a narrow rift four or five feet across, and running up to nothing some fifteen feet overhead. The rock was different here, being a mass of cemented together fragments of the old geological stone lilies, and looked as if some modern shock had riven the place in two, for the lines on either side suggested that if compressed they would still fit together. "Mean to go along here, sir?" said Sturgess, holding up the lanthorn, so as to display the stone of which the sides were formed. "Yes; go on," said Reed shortly.