“Come along, you little Vick,” I said, for so we called her; “I have a message to you, Gwenny, from the Lord in heaven.”

“Don’t ’ee talk about He,” she answered; “Her have long forgatten me.”

“That He has never done, you stupid.  Come, and see who is in the cowhouse.”

Gwenny knew; she knew in a moment.  Looking into my eyes, she knew; and hanging back from me to sigh, she knew it even better.

She had not much elegance of emotion, being flat and square all over; but none the less for that her heart came quick, and her words came slowly.

“Oh, Jan, you are too good to cheat me.  Is it joke you are putting upon me?”

I answered her with a gaze alone; and she tucked up her clothes and followed me because the road was dirty.  Then I opened the door just wide enough for the child to to go her father, and left those two to have it out, as might be most natural.  And they took a long time about it.

Meanwhile I needs must go and tell my Lorna all the matter; and her joy was almost as great as if she herself had found a father.  And the wonder of the whole was this, that I got all the credit; of which not a thousandth part belonged by right and reason to me.  Yet so it almost always is.  If I work for good desert, and slave, and lie awake at night, and spend my unborn life in dreams, not a blink, nor wink, nor inkling of my labour ever tells.  It would have been better to leave unburned, and to keep undevoured, the fuel and the food of life.  But if I have laboured not, only acted by some impulse, whim, caprice, or anything; or even acting not at all, only letting things float by; piled upon me commendations, bravoes, and applauses, almost work me up to tempt once again (though sick of it) the ill luck of deserving.

Without intending any harm, and meaning only good indeed, I had now done serious wrong to Uncle Reuben’s prospects.  For Captain Carfax was full as angry at the trick played on him as he was happy in discovering the falsehood and the fraud of it.  Nor could I help agreeing with him, when he told me all of it, as with tears in his eyes he did, and ready to be my slave henceforth; I could not forbear from owning that it was a low and heartless trick, unworthy of men who had families; and the recoil whereof was well deserved, whatever it might end in.

For when this poor man left his daughter, asleep as he supposed, and having his food, and change of clothes, and Sunday hat to see to, he meant to return in an hour or so, and settle about her sustenance in some house of the neighbourhood.  But this was the very thing of all things which the leaders of the enterprise, who had brought him up from Cornwall, for his noted skill in metals, were determined, whether by fair means or foul, to stop at the very outset.  Secrecy being their main object, what chance could there be of it, if the miners were allowed to keep their children in the neighbourhood?  Hence, on the plea of feasting Simon, they kept him drunk for three days and three nights, assuring him (whenever he had gleams enough to ask for her) that his daughter was as well as could be, and enjoying herself with the children.  Not wishing the maid to see him tipsy, he pressed the matter no further; but applied himself to the bottle again, and drank her health with pleasure.