"I ban't skilled in peat," said Daniel. "It seems all right."
"Not to my eye. Peat be sent up to me from Scotland and Wales and Ireland; and I try it with my tools here. But 'tis trash—all trash—alongside our peat. There's less tar to it, an' less gas to it, an' less power o' heat to it. Do 'e see these?"
The expert handed Daniel a number of little, heavy, black cakes, as hard as a brick.
"You've made 'em, I suppose?"
"'Tis Amicombe peat—the best in the world. Better than coal, you might almost say. We dry and we powder; then we build the cakes an' put 'em in thicky press till they are squeezed as hard as stone. There's your fuel! 'Twill smelt iron in the furnace! What other fashion o' peat but ours can do it? None as ever I heard tell about. Look at this here tar. What other peat will give you such stuff? None—none but Amicombe Hill. Millions of tons waiting—thousands of pounds of good money lying here under this heath—waiting."
"And 'twill have to wait, seemingly."
"That's the point. People think the Company's dead. But it ban't dead. I've seen the whole history. I was among the first they took on. I helped from the beginning. It ban't dead, only in low water. They may start again—they must. 'Tis madness to stop now."
"You believe in it?"
"I'd stake my last shilling in it. For that matter, I have done so. Company owes me fifty pounds less three, this very minute. But if the wise ones have their way, I'll get five hundred for my fifty yet."
Mr. Friend's fire had sunk low; into the darkness from above shot one ray of daylight, blue by contrast with the gloom of the laboratory.