Punctually to appointment we set forth, and once past the incline by which the city is left, whizzed along the smooth highway in the rear of a sturdy cob. We cleared the suburbs, and presently came upon the great mining-field that stretches its seamed and blasted waste over mile upon mile of dingy hummocks and ruined engine-houses. Here and there green oases of private parks and pleasaunces alleviate the harshness of the towering piles of mining refuse that harbour no green thing. But for these the scene is an abomination of desolation. Chacewater, a commonplace, mile-long village, with a poetical name, set beside the highroad amidst the heaps of rubbish, is a place of no conceivable interest.

Our acquaintance beguiled the way with local legends and scraps of entertaining information, and the sight of Chacewater moved him to tell us this story:—

“Now Truro,” said he, “Truro used to have a bootmaking industry, and in those times no love was lost between Truro folk and the miners of Chacewater, I can tell you. Now, it so happened that my father was driving home with a companion from Redruth one dark night, when, a short distance out of Chacewater, a crowd of miners rushed out from an old engine-house by the wayside and made for the trap, shouting, ‘Truro cobblers!’ My father had been mistaken, in all likelihood, for another party, but it seemed likely the error would not be found out until the occupants of the trap had been severely handled. My father, though, was a man of resource. He had bought, among other things, some brass candlesticks at Redruth that day, and he suddenly remembered them. Snatching up one in either hand, he dropped the reins, and presenting the candlesticks point-blank, shouted, ‘Hands off, or, by the Lord, I’ll shoot ’ee!’

“The miners left in a hurry.”

In the meanwhile we had come to Saint Day, which the Cornish folk call Saint Dye, a little market-town situated in midst of mines, living on mines, and sorry or glad only as mining prospers or is depressed. Saucy Cornish girls blew kisses to us from the windows of Saint Day. Sauciness is a quality in which the girls of Cornwall are rich. Alas! our friend drove through the narrow streets all unheeding, like another Jehu. If we had known him longer we would have cursed him for it, but he was a “new chum,” and it could not be done. Discourtesy is always reserved for friends of old standing. And thus we drove into Redruth on a Saturday afternoon. Redruth still remains a busy and populous town, despite the exhausted condition of its neighbouring mining-fields. It is an unlovely town, built at the bottom and sides of a valley, amid the scarred and tumbled mine refuse of a thousand years.

The name of Redruth is one that invites attention: it is a name that is more attractive than the town itself. Philological antiquarians profess to find its derivation in the Cornish Tretrot, which, being interpreted, means “the house on the bed of the river.” But from such airy surmisings it is better to turn aside to the bed-rocks of modern facts. For it was at Redruth that Murdoch, in 1792, discovered gas as an illuminant; here, too, the same engineer invented the traction-engine some four years later. The country-folk, who met it on the roads at night, thought it was the devil.

When our acquaintance drove us to the top of the High Street, we said good-bye, resisting his offers to drive us back to Truro.

Amid this Saturday bustle and press of business, we found it somewhat difficult to find accommodation at a decent inn, where anything like quietude reigned. At some places we could have had bedrooms, but no tea; at others, tea, but no rooms. At one inn the servant asked us if we were professionals, eyeing my huge sketch-book. “Professionals”—we glanced at one another. Surely the girl doesn’t take us for photographers?

“What professionals did you think we were?” asked the Wreck.

“Please, sir, I thought as how you was hactors,” she said. “There’s a lot of ’em come down here to-day to play-act to-night.”

Alas! when we told her we were not hactors, we could see her face change, and guessed that a fond illusion had been destroyed. We saw at once that we were inferior beings, and regretted for the first time in our lives that we were not upon the stage. It was perhaps as well they had not sufficient room for us here: we should have felt, so long as we stayed, how shamefully we had deluded that trusting servant girl, and how guilefully personated those bright beings of a higher sphere than ours, whose privilege it is to strike attitudes, and say, “Ah, ha!” at frequent intervals, together with other such colloquial and ordinary expressions.

At length we found tea and a rest for the remainder of the day—not before they were necessary.