'But it's my duty to provide for you as well as possible,' he said firmly.
And then he told her bluntly and in as few words as possible of the discovery of the clay.
The excitement at first in the child was so great that nothing would satisfy her but that they should at once turn back and see the place together. They did so, while he explained how 'Mr. Murdoch,' who was learned in strata, their depth and dip and outcrop, had declared that this deposit of fine white clay was very large. Its spread below the heather-roots might be tremendous. 'My aunt,' he said, 'your great-aunt Julia, lived all her life upon a gold mine here without knowing it, poor as a church mouse.'
This particularly thrilled her. 'How funny that she never felt it!' was her curious verdict. 'Was she very deaf?'
'Stone deaf, yes,' he replied, laughing, 'and short-sighted too.'
'Ah!' said the child, as though things were thus explained. 'But she might have digged!'
She ran among the heather when he showed her the place, found lumps of clay, played ball with them and was wildly delighted. She treated the great discovery as a game; then as a splendid secret 'just between us two.' Mr. Murdoch wouldn't tell, would he? That seemed the only danger that she saw—at first.
But her uncle knew quite well that this excitement was all false; and far from reassuring him, it merely delayed the deeper verdict that was bound to come with full comprehension. All the discovery involved had not reached her brain. As yet she realised only the novelty, the mystery, the wonder. The spot,
