CHAPTER IX.
THE MINE The Fortescue Gold Mine was five miles away from Trelevan, in the heart of wild, barren country, through which the sound of its great crushing machines whirred perpetually like the droning of an immense beehive.
The place was strewn with scattered huts belonging to such of the workers as did not live at Trelevan, and a yellow stream ran foaming through the valley, crossed here and there by primitive wooden bridges.
The desolation of the whole scene, save for that running stream, produced the effect of a world burnt out.

The hills of shale might have been vast heaps of ashes.

It was a waste place of terrible unfruitfulness.

And yet, not very far below the surface, the precious metal lay buried in the rock--the secret of the centuries which man at last had wrenched from its hiding-place.
The story went that Fortescue, the owner of the mine, had made his discovery by a mere accident in this place known as the Barren Valley, and had kept it to himself for years thereafter because he lacked the means to exploit it.

But later he had returned with the necessary capital at his back, had staked his claim, and turned the place of desolation into an abode of roaring activity.