Solomon laughed aloud.
Richard was expecting an explosion of wrath. The old man turned toward him quietly, and observed with tender gravity: "And in a certain mine, which Sol and I are both acquainted with, a white rabbit always shows itself before any accident which proves fatal to man. It was seen on the day that Sol's father sacrificed his life for mine." Then he told the story which Richard had already heard from Harry's lips, while Solomon smoked in silence, and Harry looked hard at the fire, as though—as Richard thought—to avoid meeting the glance of her father's hereditary benefactor.
"You are right to remember such a noble deed as long as you live," said
Richard, when the old man had done. "My own life," added he, in a lower
tone, "was once preserved by one whom I shall love and honor as long as
I have breath."
He saw the color glow on the young girl's cheek, and the fire-light shine with a new brilliance in her eyes. Neither Trevethick nor Solomon had caught his observation; at the moment it was made the former was stretching out his great hand to the latter, moved by that memory of twenty years ago, and, perhaps, in token of forgiveness for his recent skepticism.
"Then there's the Dead Hand at Wheal Danes, father," observed Harry, in somewhat hasty resumption of the general subject. "That's as curious as any, and more terrible."
"Wheal Danes!" said Solomon. "Why, how comes that about, when nobody can never have been killed there? It's been disused ever since the Roman time, I thought?"
"Yes, yes; so it has," answered Trevethick, impatiently.
"But I thought you told me about it yourself, father?" persisted Harry. "How you saw the Thing, with a flame at the finger-tops, going up and down where the ladders used to be, and heard voices calling from the pit."
"Not I, wench—not I. That was only what was told me by other folks.—Take another glass of your own sherry before supper, Sir; and after that we will have a bowl of punch."
The hospitalities of Mr. Trevethick were, in fact, profuse, and his manner toward Richard most conciliatory.