Clive Reed’s eyes were everywhere as they went on—now noticing spots where the sloping walls of rock had been worked for ore, others where trials had been made, honeycombing the rock with shallow cells, but always suggesting that this working must have been ages ago, and in a very superficial primitive fashion. This suggested plenty of prospect for the engineer who would attack the ancient mine with the modern appliances and forces which compel Nature to yield up her hidden treasures, buried away since the beginning of the world.
Clive Reed saw pretty well everything on his way to the dark end, and, after making a few short, sharp, business-like remarks, he said suddenly—
“The plans say there is no way out whatever, beside the entrance.”
He turned to Sturgess as he spoke, and a curious look came over the countenance of the guardian of the mine, but before he could speak one of the men behind said—
“Man as didn’t mind breaking his neck might get up yonder,” and he nodded towards the precipitous side.
“Which means that a rough staircase might easily be made if wanted, and—”
He did not finish speaking, but sprang up on to a block of stone, climbed to another, drew himself on to a third, and extricated something from a niche which had caught his observant eye, and with which he sprang down.
It was a fine cambric handkerchief, which he turned over as Sturgess looked on stolidly and with the same peculiar look in his countenance.
“Here, somebody may make inquiries about this. You had better take it, Sturgess. Visitors to the old mine perhaps, but they have no business here now. You will keep the place quite private for the present.”
The man took the handkerchief, and a keen observer would have thought that he put it out of sight rather hurriedly.