There was not much to reward the seekers,—nothing but this narrow passage leading to a black square pool of water, upon which the light of the lamp played, and seemed to be battling with a patch of reflected daylight, the image of the square opening, a hundred and fifty feet above.
“Hah!” said Mr Temple after a few minutes’ inspection of the adit and the shaft, whose walls, as far as he could reach, he chipped with a sharp-pointed little hammer formed almost like a wedge of steel. “A good hundred years since this was worked, if ever it got beyond the search. Copper decidedly.”
“And you think it is very rich?” said Will excitedly, for he had been watching Mr Temple with the greatest eagerness.
“Rich! No, my lad. What, have you got the Cornish complaint?”
“Cornish complaint, sir?” said Will wonderingly.
“The longing to search for mineral treasures?”
“Yes, sir,” said Will bluntly after a few moments’ pause.
“Then you need not waste time here, my lad.”
“But there’s copper here. I proved it; and now you say there is.”
“Yes; tons of it,” said Mr Temple.