A glance round at the buildings sufficed, and then the miner led him to the bottom of a slope where hundreds of loads had been thrown down as the débris was dug out of the shaft, and, patiently clearing off the grass that had sprung up, Pengelly kept handing up pieces of rock for Geoffrey to break and examine.
“Yes,” said Geoffrey, as he inspected scrap after scrap, even examining the fractures with a magnifying glass, “yes, that’s paying stuff, Pengelly.”
“Iss, sir, isn’t it?” cried the miner, eagerly.
“Paying, but poor.”
“But it would be richer lower down, and we should hit the six-foot lode by driving.”
“May be,” said Geoffrey. “Humph, mundic! There’s copper here too,” he said, examining a piece of stone that glistened with the yellowish metal.
“That there be,” cried Pengelly; “I’m sure Wheal Carnac would pay, sir; I always believed it; and old Prawle there at the Cove, though he’s close, he knows it’s a good pit.”
“Yes,” said Geoffrey, “I believe it would pay, well worked, and on economical and scientific principles.”
“Pay, sir? Yes, I’m sure she would,” cried Pengelly. “You look here, sir, and here, at the stuff.”
He plied his crowbar most energetically, and Geoffrey worked hard, too, breaking fragment after fragment, and convincing himself that, though under the old plans it would not have paid to powder, wash, and extract the tin from the quality of ore lying thrown out from the mouth of the pit; yet under the system he hoped to introduce he felt sure that he could make a modest return.