For my part, I had nought to do, after rubbing my bruised leg, except to look about me, so far as the dullness of light would help.  And herein I seemed, like a mouse in a trap, able no more than to run to and fro, and knock himself, and stare at things.  For here was a little channel grooved with posts on either side of it, and ending with a heap of darkness, whence the sight came back again; and there was a scooped place, like a funnel, but pouring only to darkness.  So I waited for somebody to speak first, not seeing my way to anything.

“You seem to be disappointed, John,” said Uncle Reuben, looking blue by the light of the flambeaux; “did you expect to see the roof of gold, and the sides of gold, and the floor of gold, John Ridd?”

“Ha, ha!” cried Master Carfax; “I reckon her did; no doubt her did.”

“You are wrong,” I replied; “but I did expect to see something better than dirt and darkness.”

“Come on then, my lad; and we will show you some-thing better.  We want your great arm on here, for a job that has beaten the whole of us.”

With these words, Uncle Ben led the way along a narrow passage, roofed with rock and floored with slate-coloured shale and shingle, and winding in and out, until we stopped at a great stone block or boulder, lying across the floor, and as large as my mother’s best oaken wardrobe.  Beside it were several sledge-hammers, battered, and some with broken helves.

“Thou great villain!” cried Uncle Ben, giving the boulder a little kick; “I believe thy time is come at last.  Now, John, give us a sample of the things they tell of thee.  Take the biggest of them sledge-hammers and crack this rogue in two for us.  We have tried at him for a fortnight, and he is a nut worth cracking.  But we have no man who can swing that hammer, though all in the mine have handled it.”

“I will do my very best,” said I, pulling off my coat and waistcoat, as if I were going to wrestle; “but I fear he will prove too tough for me.”

“Ay, that her wull,” grunted Master Carfax; “lack’th a Carnishman, and a beg one too, not a little charp such as I be.  There be no man outside Carnwall, as can crack that boolder.”

“Bless my heart,” I answered; “but I know something of you, my friend, or at any rate of your family.  Well, I have beaten most of your Cornish men, though not my place to talk of it.  But mind, if I crack this rock for you, I must have some of the gold inside it.”

“Dost think to see the gold come tumbling out like the kernel of a nut, thou zany?” asked Uncle Reuben pettishly; “now wilt thou crack it or wilt thou not?  For I believe thou canst do it, though only a lad of Somerset.”

Uncle Reuben showed by saying this, and by his glance at Carfax, that he was proud of his county, and would be disappointed for it if I failed to crack the boulder.  So I begged him to stoop his torch a little, that I might examine my subject.  To me there appeared to be nothing at all remarkable about it, except that it sparkled here and there, when the flash of the flame fell upon it.  A great obstinate, oblong, sullen stone; how could it be worth the breaking, except for making roads with?