Her back being turned towards the end of the room wherein the redheaded Keno was ensconced, that diffident individual furtively put forth his hand and clutched up his boots and trousers from the floor. The latter he managed to adjust as he wormed about in the berth. Then silently, stealthily, trembling with excitement, he put out his feet, and suddenly bolting for the door, with his boots in hand, let out a yell and shot from the house like a demon, the pup at his heels, loudly barking.

"Keno! Keno! come back here and stand your share!" bawled Jim, l.u.s.tily, but to no avail.

"Mercy in us!" Miss Doc exclaimed. "That man must be crazy."

Jim sank back in his bunk hopelessly.

"It's only his clothes makes him look foolish," he answered. "He's saner than I am, plain as day."

"Then it's lucky I came," decided the visitor, vigorously sewing at the trousers. "The looks of this house is enough to drive any man insane.

You're an ornary, shiftless pack of lazy-joints as ever I seen. Why don't you git up and cook your breakfast?"

Perspiration oozed from the modest Jim afresh.

"I never eat breakfast in the presence of ladies," said he.

"Well, you needn't mind me. I'm jest a plain, sensible woman," replied Miss Dennihan. "I don't want to see no feller-critter starve."

Jim writhed in the blankets. "I didn't s'pose you could stay all day,"

he ventured.

"I kin stay till I mend all your garmints and tidy up this here cabin,"

she announced, calmly. "So let your mind rest easy." She meant to see that child if it took till evening to do so.

"Maybe I can go to sleep again and dream I'm dead," said Jim, in growing despair.

"If you kin, and me around, you can beat brother John all to cream,"

she responded, smoothing out the mended overalls and laying them down on a stool. "Now you kin give me your shirt."

Jim galvanically gathered the blankets in a tightened noose about his neck.

"Hold on!" he said. "Hold on! This shirt is a bran'-new article, and you'd spoil it if you come within twenty-five yards of it with a needle."

"Where's your old one?" she demanded, atilt for something more to repair. Her gaze searched the bunks swiftly, and Jim was sure she was looking for the little man behind him. "Where's your old one went?"

she repeated.

"I turned it over on a friend of mine," drawled Jim, who meant he had deftly reversed it on himself. "It's a poor shirt that won't work both ways."

"Ain't there nuthin' more I kin mend?" she asked.

"Not unless it's somethin' of Doc's down to your lovely little home."

"Oh, I ain't agoin' to go, if that's what you're drivin' at," she answered, as she swiftly a.s.sembled the soiled utensils of the cuisine.

"I'll tidy up this here pig-pen if it takes a week, and you kin hop up and come down easy."

"I wouldn't have you go for nothing," drawled Jim, squirming with abnormal impatience to be up and doing. "Angel's visits are comin'

fewer and fewer in a box every day."

"That's bogus," answered the lady. "I sense your oilin' me over. You git up and go and git a fresh pail of water."

"I'd like to," Jim said, convincingly, "but the only time I ever broke my arm was when I went out for a bucket of water before breakfast."

"You ain't agoin' is what you mean, with all them come-a-long-way-round excuses," she conjectured. "You've got the name of bein' the laziest-jointed, mos' shiftless man into camp."

"Wal," drawled the helpless miner, "a town without a horrible example is deader than the spikes in Adam's coffin. And the next best thing to being a livin' example is to hang around the house where one of 'em stays in his bunk all mornin'."

"If that's another of them underhanded hints of your'n, you might as well save your breath," she replied. "I'll go and git the water myself, fer them dishes is goin' to git cleaned."

She took up the bucket at once. Outside, the sounds of some one scooting rapidly away brought to Jim a thought of Keno's recently demonstrated presence of mind.

Cautiously sitting up in the berth, so soon as Miss Doc had disappeared with the pail, he hurriedly drew on his boots. A sound of returning footsteps came to his startled ears. He leaped back up in the bunk, boots and all, and covered himself with the blanket, to the startlement of the timid little chap, who was sitting there to watch developments.

Both drew down as Miss Doc reappeared in the door.

"I might as well tote a kettleful, too," she said, and taking that soot-plated article from its hook in the chimney she once more started for the spring.

This time, like a guilty burglar, old Jim crept out to the door. Then with one quick resolve he caught up his trousers, and s.n.a.t.c.hing his pale little guest from the berth, flung a blanket about them, sneaked swiftly out of the cabin, stole around to its rear, and ran with long-legged awkwardness down through a shallow ravine to the cover of a huge heap of bowlders, where he paused to finish his toilet.

"Hoot! Hoot!" sounded furtively from somewhere near. Then Keno came ducking towards him from below, with Tintoretto in his wake, so rampantly glad in his puppy heart that he instantly climbed on the timid little Skeezucks, sitting for convenience on the earth, and bowled him head over heels.

"Here, pup, you abate yourself," said Jim. "Be solemnly glad and let it go at that." And he took up the gasping little chap, whose doll was, as ever, clasped fondly to his heart.

"How'd you make it?" inquired Keno. "Has she gone for good?"

"No, she's gone for water," answered the miner, ruefully. "She's set on cleanin' up the cabin. I'll bet when she's finished we'll have to pan the gravel mighty careful to find even a color of our once happy home."

"Well, you got away, anyhow," said Keno, consolingly. "You can't have your cake and eat it too."

"No, that's the one nasty thing about cake," said Jim. He sat on a rock and addressed the wondering little pilgrim, who was watching his face with baby gravity. "Did she scare the boy?" he asked. "Is he gittin' hungry? Does pardner want some breakfast?"

The little fellow nodded.

"What would little Skeezucks like old brother Jim to make for breakfast?"

The quaint bit of a man drew a trifle closer to the rough old coat and timidly answered:

"Bwead--an'--milk."

The two men started mildly.

"By jinks!" said the awe-smitten Keno. "By jinks!--talkin'!"

"I told you so," said Jim, suppressing his excitement. "Bread and milk?" he repeated. "Just bread and milk. You poor little shaver!

Wal, that's as easy as oyster stew or apple-dumplin'. Baby want anything else?"

The small boy shook a negative.

"By jinks!" said Keno, as before. "Look at him go it!"

"I'll make some bread to-day, if ever we git back into Eden," said Jim.