Grizzly was posed.
'I suppose it took a deal of sinking to reach the depth where—you found the shekels?'
'Loramussy, maister!' exclaimed the old wretch, 'weeks and weeks; that shaft yonder were nothing to it.'
'That will do, Grizzly.'
Herring was convinced that the old man was repeating by rote a lesson that had been taught him. However much he was questioned and cross-questioned he returned to the same story, in the same words. Herring gave up the hope of getting anything more in this quarter. Cobbledick had degenerated into a beggar—a wretched, canting beggar, accommodating his whine to the craze of the persons who visited Ophir.
But Herring was not going to abandon the clue of the shekel because he could find out nothing from Grizzly. He went to the Giant's Table to catechise Joyce, but she was not there.
Joyce was now nearly well. The splints had been taken off her arms, and she could use her hands, and do light work; but the hands were stiff, and long inaction had weakened her arms.
Herring could not spare the time to wait for her return; he did not know where she was, and he was due at the Oxenham Arms for the final settlement of the arrangement between Trecarrel and Trampleasure, in which he was a party.
On the morrow, Captain Trecarrel left. In the evening Herring went in quest of Joyce and found her hoeing in the little field. He called, and she ran to him as a dog to its master, and with as marked demonstrations of delight at seeing him.
'Joyce. I came here yesterday to find you, and you were away.'