morning, about seven o'clock
If your luck has equalled mine the thing is done , and Wheal Dooem , as I have named the sweet little thing , will be going full swing in a couple of weeks -- costing , perhaps , a few hundreds to put it in working order , with a trifle thereafter in the shape of wages to a man and a boy to coal the fire , and keep the thing moving with as much noise as possible to make a show , and leaving a pretty little balance of some twenty or thirty thousand at the credit of the Company , for you and me to enjoy in the meantime -- _ minus _ a small sum for rent of office , clerk 's salary , gas and coal , etcetera , as long as the bubble lasts . '' Thus did this polite scoundrel go about from house to house getting up a Cornish Mining Company on false pretences -LRB- as other polite scoundrels have done before , and doubtless as others will do again -RRB- , bringing into unmerited disrepute those genuine and grand old mines of Cornwall which have yielded stores of tin and copper , to the enriching of the English nation , ever since those old-world days when the Phoenicians sailed their adventurous barks to the `` Cassiterides '' in quest of tin . While these things were being done in London , a terrible catastrophe happened in Botallack mine , which threw a dark cloud for some time over more than one lowly cottage in St. Just . One morning , about seven o'clock , George and James , the two fair-haired sons of poor John Batten of Botallack , started for their work as usual . They were in high spirits , having obtained a good `` pitch '' on last setting-day , and things were looking well . They put on their underground clothing at the changing-house , and with several spare candles attached to buttons on the breasts of their coats , and their tools slung over their shoulders , walked towards the head of the ladder-shaft . At the mouth of the shaft they paused for a moment and glanced round .