“Ay, my lad, for I thought the Captain had gone off his head and everything would be in rack and ruin.”
“Instead of which my father is making quite a fortune out of it, Sam.”
“Ay, I s’pose so, my lad, but fortuns aren’t everything. It makes him look worried, it do, and he’ve give up his garden, as is a bad sign. I don’t like to see a man give up his garden. It means weeds.”
“Well, then, why don’t you hoe them up, Sam?” I said sharply.
“Hoe ’em up, lad? I can’t put a hoe in his mind, can I? That’s where the weeds grows, my dear lad. Why, he never takes no interest in his guns now, and if I hadn’t set to this morning to scour ’em out and give ’em a regular good cleaning, where would they have been when the French come?”
Chapter Twenty Four.
Down the Silver Mine.
I left Sam picking out the touch-holes with a piece of wire, walked across the high ground of the wind-swept moor and descended into the Gap, a well-beaten track now marking the way.