Golden visions of succeeding to the management of the inn, and of taking to the furniture and fixings in the gross, had flitted across this honest gentleman’s brain, and the disappearance of the lantern affected him with the acute sense of pecuniary damage.  The general valuation would probably be no less because of the absence of this article.

“Send out and borrow another, as many, in fact, as you can get,” said Richard, impatiently; “and get ready a torch or two besides.  Pick out four of the strongest men yonder, and bid them come with me, and search Wheal Danes.”

“What! that old pit.  Sir?  You’ll not find a man to do it—­no, not if they knowed as master was at the bottom of it.  You wait till morning.”

“Your master is at the bottom of it.  I feel sure he took the lantern with him to search that mine.  I will give them a pound apiece to start at once.  Pack up this food, and lend them a mattress to bring him home upon.  Be quick! be quick!”

Richard’s energy fairly overpowered the phlegmatic inn-keeper, whose conscience, perhaps, also smote him with respect to his missing master; and he set about the execution of these orders promptly.  Wheal Danes, he had truly hinted, was a very unpopular spot with its neighbors after nightfall; but, on the other hand, sovereigns were rare in Gethin, and greatly prized.  In less than half an hour the necessaries which Richard had indicated were procured, and a party, consisting of himself, four stalwart miners, and the inn-keeper, started for the pit.  These were followed by half the inhabitants of the little village, attracted by the rumor of their purpose, which had oozed out from the bar of the Gethin Castle.  The windy down had probably never known so strange a concourse as that which presently streamed over it, with torch and lantern, and stood around the mouth of the disused mine.  The night was dark, and nothing could be seen save what the flare of the lights they carried showed them—­a jagged rim of pit without a bottom.  Notwithstanding their numbers there was but little talk among them; they had a native dread of this dismal place, and, besides, there might now be a ghastly secret hidden within it.  A muffled exclamation, half of admiration, half of awe, broke from the circling crowd as, the ladder planted, Richard was seen descending it torch in hand.  No other man followed; none had volunteered, and he had asked for no companion.  They watched him, as the countrymen of those who had formerly worked Wheal Danes might have watched Curtius when he leaped into the gulf; and as in his case, when they saw the ladder removed, and the light grow dim, and finally die out before their eyes, it seemed that the pit had closed on Richard—­that he was swallowed up alive.  No one, unless the strange story about their missing neighbor which this man had brought was true, had ventured into Wheal Danes for these fifty years!  They kept an awe-struck silence, straining eye and ear.  Some thought they could still see a far-off glimmer, others that they could hear a stifled cry, when the less fortunate or the less imaginative could hear or see nothing.  But after a little darkness and silence reigned supreme beneath them; they seemed standing on the threshold of a tomb.