Tramplara held out his hand, 'I give it you.'
'I should prefer it in black and white,' said the Captain.
'You shall have it in yellow and white,' said the old man. 'And now in return you shall grant me a favour--your name as a director of the Ophir Gold Mining Company.'
'My name is Trecarrel,' answered the Captain, freezingly.
'I know that well enough--that is why I want it.'
'And that is precisely why you shall not have it.'
'Emphatically. I do not believe in Ophir.'
The old man drummed with his fingers on the table, and raised his eyes furtively to the Captain, met his cold, supercilious stare, and dropped them again.
'Well! go into the drawing-room, and patch up the rent with Orange.'
Then, when the Captain was gone, Tramplara laughed heartily. 'By Grogs!' he said, 'who would have thought the fellow so keen? He don't look it.'
The Captain found Orange standing in the drawing-room leaning against the mantel-piece, tearing a white lily that she had plucked out of a vase into many pieces. Her fingers were stained with the pollen. Her cheeks were flushed, and an angry glitter was in her eyes, twinkling through tears of mortified pride.
Trecarrel had not much difficulty in changing the expression of that handsome face, and before he left the reconciliation was complete, sealed with a kiss, and the day was named.
In a remarkably short space of time two 'leats,' that is, channels of water, had been brought from Rayborough Pool along the side of the moor to the site of the gold mine. Buildings had been erected, wooden sheds run up and tarred, and a crushing machine was in operation. One stream of water was conducted over a wheel, and the wheel set in motion half a dozen hammers that pounded the granite; then the granite thus pounded was passed under an iron roller which effectually reduced it to powder. This powder was made to slide through a trough into water brought by the second leat, and the water, as soon as it received the pounded quartz, became milky. The milky water overflowed into a second tank, depositing in both much that was held in solution, and then ran away into the river, which it discoloured for some distance down.
Old Tramplara looked regretfully at the white water. If Ophir had been nearer Plymouth or Exeter, he might have sold it as milk.