“Pretty fair,” said Ashcott.  “They’re getting the strike rot like the rest of the world.  We shan’t hold ’em for ever.  If any of the Farringmore lot turned up here, I wouldn’t answer for ’em.  Lord Wilchester talked of motoring down the other day, bringing friends if you please to see the mine, I warned him off—­the damn’ fool!  Simply asking for trouble, as I told him.  ‘Well, what’s the matter?’ he said.  ‘What do they want?’ ‘They’d like houses instead of pigsties for one thing,’ I said.  And he laughed at that.  ’Oh, let ’em go to the devil!’ he said.  ’I haven’t got any money to spare for luxuries of that kind.’  So far as that goes I believe he is hard up, but then look at the way they live!  They’d need to be multi-millionaires to keep it up.”

The man’s speech was crude, even brutal, and the girl on Fielding’s other side shivered a little and drew a pace away.  It was very evident on which side his sympathies lay.  There was more than a tinge of the street ranter in his utterance.  She was glad that Fielding spared her an introduction.

She tried to turn her attention back to the entertainment, but the coarse words hung in her memory like an evil cloud.  They recalled Green’s brief condemnation of the previous evening.  Evidently his point of view was the same.  He regarded the whole social system as evil.  Had not the squire told her that he wanted to reform the world?

The evening wore on, and with unfaltering resource Dick Green kept the interest of his audience from flagging.  He chose his assistants with insight and skill, and every item on his program scored a success.  His banjo was in almost continuous demand throughout, but finally, just at the end, he laid it aside.

He took something from his pocket; what it was Juliet could not see, but she caught the gleam of metal in the lamp-light, and in a moment a great buzz of pleasure spread through the crowd.  And then it began—­such music as she had never dreamed of—­such music as surely was never fluted save from the pipes of Pan.  A long, sweet, thrilling note like the call of a nightingale, starting far away, drawing swiftly nearer, nearer, till she felt as if it ended against her heart, and then all the joy of spring, of youth, of hope, poured forth in an amazing ecstasy of silver sound—­showers of fairy notes like the dancing of tiny feet or the lightest patter of summer rain that ever fell upon opening leaves—­and the gold-flecked sunshine that shimmered in the crystal dawning of a day new-born.  Afterwards there came the sound of waterfalls and laughing streams and the calling of fairy voices, the tinkle of fairy laughter, and then the sea and shoaling water—­shoaling water—­breaking in a million sparkles over the rocks of an enchanted strand!

And it was to her alone that that wonder-music spoke.  She and he were wandering alone together along that fairy shore where every sea-shell gleamed like pearl and every wave broke iridescent at their feet.  The sun shone in the sky for them alone, and the caves were mystic palaces of delight that awaited their coming.  And once it seemed to her that he drew her close, and she felt his kisses on her lips....