The clash and clamor of the busy hives brought the difficulties of his undertaking glaringly before him. His own ignorance seemed appalling. How could he hope to compete with this skilled labor and wonderful machinery!
“I am not competing,” he told himself. “I am doing something which no one else has thought of. The idea is original,—here, at any rate,—and ideas can be made to pay.”
CHAPTER III THE SMUGGLERS’ CACHE IS FOUND
“S’pose you’re goin’ to put in a ’rastra?”
Ben turned and saw the man who had signed as a witness to the agreement.
“How do you do, Mr. Mundon?” he replied. “Yes, I think it will need an arastra to crush the bricks.” His grave face showed that already the cares of the undertaking were preying upon him.
“Don’t you mind the sneers and laughs of anybody,” the man said, with a sturdy independence that Ben liked. “You’ve got a good proposition. I’ve seen it done in Australia and a big pile cleaned up. They do it in this country, too; and if this old chap you bought it from didn’t have the mining fever so bad, he’d have done it years ago.”