'Perhaps I have wronged you, Simon,' I answered very softly; for the sweat upon his forehead shone in the smoky torchlight; 'if I have, I crave your pardon. But did you not bring up from Cornwall a little maid named "Gwenny," and supposed to be your daughter?'
'Ay, and she was my daughter, my last and only child of five; and for her I would give this mine, and all the gold will ever come from it.'
'You shall have her, without either mine or gold; if you only prove to me that you did not abandon her.'
'Abandon her! I abandon Gwenny!' He cried with such a rage of scorn, that I at once believed him. 'They told me she was dead, and crushed, and buried in the drift here; and half my heart died with her. The Almighty blast their mining-work, if the scoundrels lied to me!'
'The scoundrels must have lied to you,' I answered, with a spirit fired by his heat of fury: 'the maid is living and with us. Come up; and you shall see her.'
'Rig the bucket,' he shouted out along the echoing gallery; and then he fell against the wall, and through the grimy sack I saw the heaving of his breast, as I have seen my opponent's chest, in a long hard bout of wrestling. For my part, I could do no more than hold my tongue and look at him.
Without another word we rose to the level of the moors and mires; neither would Master Carfax speak, as I led him across the barrows. In this he was welcome to his own way, for I do love silence; so little harm can come of it. And though Gwenny was no beauty, her father might be fond of her.
So I put him in the cow-house (not to frighten the little maid), and the folding shutters over him, such as we used at the beestings; and he listened to my voice outside, and held on, and preserved himself. For now he would have scooped the earth, as cattle do at yearning-time, and as meekly and as patiently, to have his child restored to him. Not to make long tale of it--for this thing is beyond me, through want of true experience--I went and fetched his Gwenny forth from the back kitchen, where she was fighting, as usual, with our Betty.
'Come along, you little Vick,' I said, for so we called her; 'I have a message to you, Gwenny, from the Lord in heaven.'
'Don't 'ee talk about He,' she answered; 'Her have long forgatten me.'