“I don’t see why he stayed here,� persisted Dick.
“He just stayed and kept staying,� said the smith. “Maybe that old silver mine had something to do with it. He was always expecting to get out a fortune. He come with the Frenchers to chase Cornwallis, and they stopped here, two or three days, to mend shoes and get victuals.
“The old Mr. Osborne that owned Larkland in them days see what a good blacksmith my great-grandad was, and told him when the war was over to come back here and he should have a home. So he did, and the squire helped him get some of the old glebe land, and he married Mr. Osborne’s overseer’s daughter. He had a smithy on the Old Plank Road by Mine Creek. I reckon you know the place.�
Dick nodded. He did not say he had been there that very afternoon.
“And he found silver on that hill. My grand-daddy used to tell us children about seeing his father getting silver out of the ground and beating it on his anvil with his sledge hammer. And Black Mayo that’s always finding out something ’bout everything, he found them old reecord papers.�
“And they proved about the silver mine?� asked Dick.
“Certainly they did,� asserted Mr. Mallett. “Would folks try a man in law court for making money out of silver he didn’t have? Great-granddad didn’t deny making of it. He just said he wasn’t making no false coins. He was hammering out sterling pure silver. That’s why they call it the Sterling Mine. And he was making pieces like Spanish six shilling pieces—our folks counted money by shillings in them days—and was giving them, in place of what they called alloy; he was giving better and purer money than the law. And what could folks say to that? Why, nothing; for it was the truth.�
“And so they didn’t punish him?� asked Dick.
“Punish him? What for? For doing better than the law of the land? No, sirree!�
“I don’t reckon he got out all the silver,� said Dick, more to himself than to Mr. Mallett.