CHAPTER IX
THE MINE
The Fortescue Gold Mine was five miles away from Trelevan, in the heart
of wild, barren country, through which the sound of its great crushing
machines whirred perpetually like the droning of an immense beehive.
The place was strewn with scattered huts belonging to such of the workers
as did not live at Trelevan, and a yellow stream ran foaming through the
valley, crossed here and there by primitive wooden bridges.
The desolation of the whole scene, save for that running stream, produced
the effect of a world burnt out. The hills of shale might have been vast
heaps of ashes. It was a waste place of terrible unfruitfulness. And yet,
not very far below the surface, the precious metal lay buried in the
rock--the secret of the centuries which man at last had wrenched from its
hiding-place.
The story went that Fortescue, the owner of the mine, had made his
discovery by a mere accident in this place known as the Barren Valley,
and had kept it to himself for years thereafter because he lacked the
means to exploit it. But later he had returned with the necessary capital
at his back, had staked his claim, and turned the place of desolation
into an abode of roaring activity. The men he employed were for the most
part drawn from the dregs--sheep-stealers, cattle-thieves, smugglers,
many of them ex-convicts--a fierce, unruly lot, hating all law and order,
yet submitting for the sake of that same precious yellow dust that they
ground from the foundation stones of the world.
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