“I’d take him ’bout with me to chapel o’ Sundays till you’ve converted him if I was thee, Amos Pengelly,” said one sharp-tongued woman at last, as he turned the corner of the steep lane where he lived; and then his own door was reached. He dragged Trethick inside, and passed his hand across his dripping brow before taking the young man, now terribly helpless, upon his back, after the fashion of a sack, and carrying him up the short flight of steps and laying him upon his own bed, where Geoffrey seemed to go off at once into a deep sleep.
For the drug had had a most potent effect upon him, from the fact that he had partaken of a terribly strong dose in the dregs of the bottle, where it had settled down; the two watchers at the furnace, though they had drunk deeply, neither of them having swallowed one-half so much.
As soon as Pengelly had relieved himself of his load, he sank down in the one chair in his bare bedroom, and sat watching Geoffrey hour after hour, waiting for him to awaken.
“When he’s sober, and in his right mind, I’ll talk to him,” said Pengelly, to himself; and there he sat, hour after hour, comforting himself by singing hymns in a low voice, giving them out first two lines at a time, after announcing number and tune, to an imaginary congregation gathered round; and this he kept up till the afternoon.
Then he went down to the mine, leaving Geoffrey locked in; but, on reaching the cliff, it was only to see so many people hanging about the buildings discussing the accident that he had not the heart to go there and be questioned; so he turned aside, and walked on past the old mine shaft to Gwennas Cove, hoping to find old Prawle outside, for he felt that he could not go to the cottage.
He had his wish, for the old man was there, sitting upon a stone and smoking his pipe.
“Well, Amos,” he said, as the miner came up, “so you’ve flooded the mine, I hear.”
“Ay, she’s full o’ water,” said Pengelly, sadly.
“Ah, that’s a bad job; but what fools ye must have been.”
“Fools, perhaps, not to keep a better look-out; but it’s done, Master Prawle, and we must get the water out. How’s Bessie?”