“That’s just what father says, Sir,” answered the young girl, quietly.  “But when things have happened so long ago—­before one was born—­they don’t come home to one quite so strong, you see.  Father keeps not only his old gratitude, but his old tastes.  He cares more for mines and machinery and such like than for any thing else; he is a better mechanic than any in Turlock, where I have just been to the watch-maker’s to get him some steel springs.  You should see the locks he makes, and the rings he turns.  He will be so pleased if you ask him to show them to you.”

“I shall certainly ask him to do so, if I get the chance,” said Richard, eagerly.  “Is that your house with the pretty garden?”

“No, Sir; that’s the parson’s.  Nobody can get flowers to grow as he does.  The next house at the top of the hill is ours.”

“Why, I thought that would be the inn!” exclaimed Richard, looking at the little white-washed house, with its sign-board, or what seemed to be such, swinging in the rising breeze.

“It is the inn,” said his companion, quietly, but not without a roguish smile.  “Father keeps the Gethin Castle, although he has many other trades.”

“And is that he, at the door yonder?” inquired Richard, pointing to a tall, thick-set man of middle age, who was standing beneath the little portico, with a pipe in his mouth.

“No, Sir, that is not father,” replied the girl, with sudden gravity; “that is Solomon Coe.”

CHAPTER XII.

A PERILOUS CLIMB.

“Is father in?” inquired the young girl of Solomon, as he stood in the doorway, without moving aside to let Richard pass into the house.

“No, he is not,” returned the person addressed, his keen blue eye fixed suspiciously on the stranger.  “As you were so long on your errand, he gave up his lock-work, and has gone off to the pit.  He said he had never known you loiter so.”

“I did not loiter at all,” returned the maiden, indignantly; “if it had not been for the fog, I should have been home an hour ago; but one can’t walk through wool as if it were air.  You had the fog here yourselves, hadn’t ye?”

It was strange to note the change in the girl’s speech; not only were her air and tone quite different from what they had been—­her modesty or shyness exchanged for a confidence and even a touch of defiance—­but her phraseology had become blunt and provincial.

“Well, any way he was angered, Harry,” returned Solomon, “until I told him of the new copper lode, as I whispered to you of this morning (you were the first to learn it, Harry), when off he set, in good-humor enough with all the world.—­You’ll come across John Trevethick, if you want him, young man, over at Dunloppel, though I doubt whether you will find him much of a customer—­unless you are in the iron and steel line.”

“I am in the knife-and-fork line just at present,” answered Richard, good-humoredly; “and, if you will be good enough to move aside, I should like to order my dinner.”