“Which way, then?”

“‘Can’t stay to causey, Master Zeb, wi’ all the best horn-handled knives to be took out o’ blue-butter ’gainst this evenin’s courant.  Besides, you called me a liar last week.”

“So you be.  But I’ll believe ’ee this time.”

“Well, I’ll tell ‘ee this much—­for you look a very handsome jowter i’ that new cart.  If I were you, I’d be careful that gay furriner didn steal more’n my name”

Meantime, a group of four was standing in the middle of Parc Dew, the twenty-acred field behind the farmstead.  The stranger, dressed in a blue jersey and outfit of Farmer Tresidder’s, that made up in boots for its shortcomings elsewhere, was addressing the farmer, Ruby, and Jim Lewarne, who heard him with lively attention.  In his right hand he held a walking-stick armed with a spud, for uprooting thistles; and in his left a cake of dark soil, half stone, half mud.  His manner was earnest.

“. . . .  I see,” he was saying, “that I don’t convince you; and it’s only for your own sakes I insist on convincing you.  You’ll grant me that, I suppose.  To-morrow, or the next day, I go; and the chances are that we never meet again in this world.  But ’twould be a pleasant thought to carry off to the ends of the earth that you, my benefactors, were living in wealth, enriched (if I may say it without presumption) by a chance word of mine.  I tell you I know something of these matters—­”

“I thought you’d passed your days privateerin’,” put in Jim Lewarne, who was the only hostile listener, perhaps because he saw no chance of sharing in the promised wealth.

“Jim, hold your tongue!” snapped Ruby.

“I ask you,” went on the stranger, without deigning to answer, “I ask you if it does not look like Providence?  Here have you been for years, dwelling amid wealth of which you never dreamed.  A ship is wrecked close to your doors, and of all her crew the one man saved is, perhaps, the one man who could enlighten you.  You feed him, clothe him, nurse him.  As soon as he can crawl about, he picks a walking-stick out of half-a-dozen or more in the hall, and goes out with you to take a look at the farm.  On his way he notes many things.  He sees (you’ll excuse me, Farmer, but I can’t help it) that you’re all behind the world, and the land is yielding less than half of what it ought.  Have you ever seen a book by Lord Dundonald on the connection between Agriculture and Chemistry?  No?  I thought not.  Do you know of any manure better than the ore-weed you gather down at the Cove?  Or the plan of malting grain to feed your cattle on through the winter?  Or the respective merits of oxen and horses as beasts of draught?  But these matters, though the life and soul of modern husbandry, are as nothing to this lump in my hand.  What do you call the field we’re now standing in?”

“Parc Dew.”

“Exactly—­the ‘black field,’ or the ‘field of black soil’:  the very name should have told you.  But you lay it down in grass, and but for the chance of this spud and a lucky thistle, I might have walked over it a score of times without guessing its secret.  Man alive, it’s red gold I have here—­red, wicked, damnable, delicious gold—­the root of all evil and of most joys.”