‘And I will have it, friend Tregarva,’ quoth Lancelot, lighting his cigar.
‘I was about sixteen years old, just after I came home from the Brazils—’
‘What! have you been in the Brazils?’
‘Indeed and I have, sir, for three years; and one thing I learnt there, at least, that’s worth going for.’
‘What’s that?’
‘What the Garden of Eden must have been like. But those Brazils, under God, were the cause of my being here; for my father, who was a mine-captain, lost all his money there, by no man’s fault but his own, and not his either, the world would say, and when we came back to Cornwall he could not stand the bal work, nor I neither. Out of that burning sun, sir, to come home here, and work in the levels, up to our knees in warm water, with the thermometer at 85°, and then up a thousand feet of ladder to grass, reeking wet with heat, and find the easterly sleet driving across those open furze-crofts—he couldn’t stand it, sir—few stand it long, even of those who stay in Cornwall. We miners have a short lease of life; consumption and strains break us down before we’re fifty.’
‘But how came you here?’
‘The doctor told my father, and me too, sir, that we must give up mining, or die of decline: so he came up here, to a sister of his that was married to the squire’s gardener, and here he died; and the squire, God bless him and forgive him, took a fancy to me, and made me under-keeper. And I loved the life, for it took me among the woods and the rivers, where I could think of the Brazils, and fancy myself back again. But mustn’t talk of that—where God wills is all right. And it is a fine life for reading and thinking, a gamekeeper’s, for it’s an idle life at best. Now that’s over,’ he added, with a sigh, ‘and the Lord has fulfilled His words to me, that He spoke the first night that ever I heard a stone-plover cry.’
‘What on earth can you mean?’ asked Lancelot, deeply interested.
‘Why, sir, it was a wild, whirling gray night, with the air full of sleet and rain, and my father sent me over to Redruth town to bring home some trade or other. And as I came back I got blinded with the sleet, and I lost my way across the moors. You know those Cornish furze-moors, sir?’