She read it carefully, appreciating that Jake Everand had kept the technical terms to a minimum for her benefit. The conclusions were clear. The mine was worked out; there was not enough lead ore in it to make reopening a viable proposition. Jake recommended that the mine should be sold off as a novelty, perhaps to be featured as a tourist attraction. “It is structurally sound,” he had written, “and would take very little adapting to become an interesting day trip for visitors to Derbyshire.” It was a final insult. Cassy almost threw the bulky report on the floor. A novelty. A tourist attraction. He was suggesting that her beautiful, awesome Pennyroyal should be gawped at by tourists who paid fifty pence at the door and chucked litter everywhere. No, thank you; it was a lead mine, not Disneyland. Even as she dismissed his suggestion, a small part of her remembered the thrill and excitement of going underground for the first time, and the strange, eerie boat ride through the dimly lit canal.
