Mr Cornish afterwards congratulated the adventurers on the success of the mine, and the splendid prospects which were opening up to them—prospects which, he had no doubt, would be fully realised ere long. He referred also to the condition of the miners of the neighbourhood, and alluded to the fact that the neighbouring mines, Wheal Owles and Levant, were also in a flourishing condition; a matter, he said, for which they had reason to be profoundly thankful, for the distress in the district had been severe and prolonged. The manager’s voice deepened at this point, and he spoke with pathos, for he had a kindly heart, and his thoughts were at the moment with many a poor miner, in whose little cottages the effects of gaunt poverty could be traced in scanty furniture, meagre fare, and careworn brows. He remembered, too, that only the week before he had seen poor blind John Batten carried to his grave, and had heard the sobs of the bereaved widow, as she attempted to tell him how the brave man had forgotten himself to the very last, when he put his wasted hand on her head, and said, “I’m goin’ to leave thee, Mary, for a time; but cheer up, dear lass, I’ll be with Jesus soon, an’ have my sight restored, and look wance more ’pon the faces of the dear boys, an’ ’pon your own sweet face too, dear lass, when we meet again in heaven.”

There was one of the miners and shareholders of Botallack who did not die, but who lived to enjoy the fruit of his labour and the sunshine of prosperity. James Penrose recovered—not only his health, but also, in some degree, his sight. One of his eyes had indeed been entirely destroyed by the explosion which had so nearly killed him, but the other was partially restored. A long period elapsed, however, ere he was able to go about. Then he found his circumstances so much improved that it was not necessary to resume work underground. Botallack, in which all his savings had been invested, continued steadily to improve, and from the income derived from this source alone he was enabled to live without labouring. But Penrose was not the man to sit down in idleness. Wesley never had a more earnest follower than this miner of St. Just. Thenceforth he devoted himself to preaching, teaching, and doing good as his hand found opportunity, and, being an active man as well as conscientious, he laboured to the end of his days in the service of his Lord more energetically than he had ever toiled in the mines.

Penrose and David Trevarrow had always been staunch friends. After the accident to the former, they became more closely united than before. Trevarrow did not give up underground work; he possessed no shares in any of the mines, but, in common with the rest of the mining community, he benefited by the sunshine of prosperity that became so bright at that period, and found leisure, when above ground, to join his friend in his labours of love.

They both agreed to make an earnest effort to convince Maggot and John Cock of the error of their ways—with what amount of success it is not easy to state, for these worthies were made of stubborn metal, that required a furnace of unusually fierce heat to melt it. However, we are warranted in concluding that some good was done, from the fact that both of them gave up smuggling, and, in various other ways, showed indication of an improved state of mind. Maggot especially gave a signal and unexpected proof of a softened spirit, when, one Sunday morning, as he was getting ready for chapel, he said to his wife that it was “high time to send that little chucklehead the baby to Sunday school, for he was no better than a small heathen!” The “baby,” be it observed, was about six years old at the time when this speech was made, and his protégé the “chet” was a great-grandmother, with innumerable chets of her own. It is right to add that, in accordance with this opinion of his father, the baby was carried off to school that very morning by Zackey and Grace, the first having grown to be a strapping youth, and the other a lovely girl, for whose sake there were scores of young miners in St. Just who would gladly have walked ten miles on their bare knees, or dived head foremost into Wheal Hazzard shaft, or jumped over the cliffs into Zawn Buzzangein, or done any other insane act or desperate deed, if, by so doing, they could have caused one thrill of pleasure to pass through her dear little heart!

It is not necessary, we should think, to say that in the midst of so much sunshine Oliver Trembath and Rose Ellis thought it advisable to “make hay.” Old Mr Donnithorne and his excellent wife (of whose goodness and wisdom, by the way, he became more and more convinced every day of his life) saw no objection whatever to this hay-making—so the young couple were wed at the Wesleyan Chapel of St. Just—Charlie Tregarthen, of course, being groomsman—and the only vehicle in the town was hired to drive them over to Penberth Cove and bliss!

As to George Augustus Clearemout, Esquire—that able managing director, despite his ducking at St. Just, continued to fill his chair and to fulfil his destiny in the airy little street in London, where, for many years, he represented Wheal Dooem, and “did” a too confiding public. In this work he was ably assisted by Secretary Jack Muddle, who became quite celebrated as a clear expounder and explainer of veins, lodes, ores, cross-cuts, shafts, levels, winzes, minerals, metals, and mines—insomuch that he was regarded by many of the confiding public who frequented his office as a more thoroughly learned and scientific man than George Augustus himself. It is interesting, how ever, to have to record the curious fact that the too confiding public changed their opinion at last on this head, and came to regard Secretary Jack as a humbug, and the managing director as a scoundrel. Unfortunately this change of opinion did not take place until the whole of the too confiding public (the T.C.P., as Clearemout styled them) had lost large sums of money, and a few of them become bankrupt. When affairs had reached this crisis, one of the T.C.P.—an irascible old gentleman, whose fiery nature seemed to have singed all the hair off his head, leaving it completely bald—went down to Cornwall in a passion to sift the thing for himself. There he found the Great Wheal Dooem pump-engine going full swing, day and night, under the superintendence of one man, while the vast works underground (on which depended the “enormous” dividends promised to and expected by the T.C.P.) were carried on by another man and a boy. On making this discovery the fiery old gentleman with the denuded head left Cornwall—still in a passion—and exploded in the face of a meeting of the members of the T.C.P., who immediately exploded in each other’s faces, and appointed an indignation committee to go and explode, with unexampled fury, in the faces of the managing director and Secretary Jack. But these knowing gentlemen, being aware that the explosion was coming, had wisely betaken themselves to the retirement and seclusion of the Continent.

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