“You’ll pay for a new hat for me?”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
“And another knife, better than the one you pitched overboard?”
“Oh, we can come round in a boat and find that when the tide’s down.”
“Rocks are never bare when the tide’s down here, my lad. There’s always six fathom o’ water close below here; so you wouldn’t ha’ been broken up if you’d falled; but you might ha’ been drownded. That were a five-shilling knife.”
“All right, Sam, I’ll buy you another,” shouted Gwyn, who was some distance up now.
“Thank ye. Before you go, though,” said Sam Hardock.
“Go? Go where?”
“Off to school, my lad; I’m going to ’tishion your two fathers to send you both right away, for I can’t have you playing no more of your pranks in my mine, and so I tell you.”
Gwyn made no reply, but he went steadily up, while, on casting a glance below, he saw that the mine captain was making his way as steadily down; but he thought a good deal, and a great deal more afterwards, for, on reaching the top of the cliff, there lay Joe on the short grass, looking ghastly pale, and his father, with Joe’s, ready to seize him by the arm and draw him into safety.