“You don’t say that, Mr. Hope?”

“I do say it, and I shall have to swear it.  You may be sure Mr. Bartley will subpoena me, if this wretched squabble gets into court.”

“But what did my father say to you?”

“He was kind and courteous to me.  I was poor as a rat, and dusty with travel—­on foot; and he was a fine gentleman, as he always is, when he is not in too great a passion.  He told me more than one land-owner had wasted money in this county groping for coal.  He would not waste his money nor dirty his fingers.  But he thanked me for my friendly zeal, and rewarded me with ten shillings.”

“Oh!” cried Walter, and hid his face in his hands.  As for Mary, she put her hand gently but quietly on Hope’s shoulder, as if to protect him from such insults.

“Why, children,” said Hope, pleased at their sympathy, but too manly to hunt for it, “it was more than he thought the information worth, and I assure you it was a blessed boon to me.  I had spent my last shilling, and there I was trapesing across the island on a wild-goose chase with my reaping-hook and my fiddle; and my poor little Grace, that I—­that I—­”

Mary’s hand went a moment to his other shoulder, and she murmured through her tears, “You have got me.”

Then Hope was happy again, and indeed the simplest woman can find in a moment the very word that is balm of Gilead to a sorrowful man.

However, Hope turned it off and continued his theme.  The jury, he said, would pounce on that ten shillings as the Colonel’s true estimate of his coal, and he would figure in the case as a dog in the manger who grudged Bartley the profits of a risky investment he had merely sneered at and not opposed, until it turned out well; and also disregarded the interests of the little community to whom the mine was a boon.  “No,” said Hope; “tell your lawyer that I am Bartley’s servant, but love equity.  I have proposed to Bartley to follow a wonderful seam of coal under Colonel Clifford’s park.  We have no business there.  So if the belligerents will hear reason I will make Bartley pay a royalty on every ton that comes to the surface from any part of the mine; and that will be L1200 a year to the Cliffords.  Take this to the lawyer and tell him to unfix that hero’s bayonet, or he will charge at the double and be the death of his own money—­and yours.”

Walter threw up his hands with amazement and admiration.  “What a head!” said he.

“Fiddledee!” said Mary; “what a heart!”

“In a word, a phoenix,” said Hope, dryly.  “Praise is sweet, especially behind one’s back.  So pray go on, unless you have something better to say to each other;” and Hope retired briskly into his office.  But when the lovers took him at his word, and began to strut up and down hand in hand, and murmur love’s music into each other’s ears, he could not take his eyes off them, and his thoughts were sad.  She had only known that young fellow a few months, yet she loved him passionately, and he would take her away from her father before she even knew all that father had done and suffered for her.  When the revelation did come she would perhaps be a wife and a mother, and then even that revelation would fall comparatively flat.