The subject dropped; but that night, impressed as they had been by what they had heard, and partly from partaking too liberally of a late supper, both Gwyn and Joe had dreams about the sea breaking into and flooding the mine, Gwyn dreaming in addition that he behaved in a very gallant way. For he seemed to find the hole through which the water passed in, and stopped it by thrusting in his arm, which stuck fast, and, try how he would, he could not extricate it, but stood there with the water gradually stifling him, and preventing him from calling aloud for help.
The heat and darkness at last rescued him from his perilous position—that is to say, he awoke to find himself lying upon his back with his face beneath the clothes; and these being thrown off, he saw that the morning sunshine was flooding the bedroom, and the memory of the troublous dream rapidly died away.
Chapter Forty Three.
After a Lapse.
“That makes the fourth,” said Colonel Pendarve, tossing a letter across to his son in the office one morning when the mine was in full work; “four proposals from Mr Dix, and I have had three at intervals from that other legal luminary, Brownson. Seven applications to buy the mine in two years, Gwyn. Yes, it will be two years next week since we began mining, and in those two years you and Joe Jollivet have grown to be almost men—quite men in some respects, though you don’t shave yet.”
“Yes, I do, father,” said Gwyn, smiling.
“Humph!” ejaculated the Colonel, “then it’s an utter waste of time. There, answer that letter and say emphatically No.”
The Colonel left the office, and Gwyn read the letter.