"Possibly you are right, Mr. Jenkins," Ralph said, with a laugh.
"Ay, and you'll laugh t'other side of your face afore you've done with it."
"It don't require no thinking over. Yer father sunk all his bit of money in this place, in bringing it under cultivation; and now you're throwing your bit of money after his, and other folks' to boot, in undoin' all he did, and turning the place into a desert again."
"But suppose the real wealth of this place is under the surface, Mr. Jenkins?"
"Suppose the sky falls. I tell 'ee there ain't no wealth except what grows. However, 'tain't no business of mine. If folks like to make fools of their selves and throw away their bit of money, that's their own look-out." And Farmer Jenkins spat on the ground and departed.
Jim Brewer pulled off his coat, and set to work at a point indicated by Ralph to sink a pit.
That was the beginning of what Ruth laughingly called "Great St. Goram Mine," with an emphasis on the word "great."
After watching Jim for a few minutes, Ralph pulled off his coat also, and began to assist his employee. It did not look a very promising commencement for a great enterprise.
The ground was hard and stony, and Jim's strength was not what it had been, nor what it would be providing he got proper food and plenty of it; while Ralph could scarcely be said to be proficient in the use of pick and shovel.
By the end of the third day they had got through the "rubbly ground," as Jim called it, and had struck what seemed a bed of solid rock.
Ralph got intensely excited. He had little doubt that this was the lode, the existence of which his father had accidentally discovered. With the point of his pick he searched round for fissures; but the rock was very closely knit, and he had had no experience in rock working.
Jim Brewer, as a practical miner, showed much more skill, and when Ralph returned to his home that evening his pockets were full of bits of rock that had been splintered from the lode.
"Well, Ralph, what news?" was Ruth's first question when she met him at the door. She was as much excited over the prospecting expedition as he was.
"We've struck something," he said eagerly, "but whether it's father's lode or no I'm not certain yet."