tched up his sagging overalls. "Kin any
man be trusted?" he inquired sardonically. "He kin, says I, if it's to
his intrust. I'm gittin' my wages fer the diggin', ain't I? Then it's
to me intrust to kape on diggin'! Sure, me tongue niver wagged me
belly outy a grub-stake yit, young feller! I'm with ye on this, an'
thot's me true word I'm givin' ye."

The professor hurried off to find Fred and urge him to let Murphy
advise them upon the exact sites of their mines. Murphy hung his
hammer up in the forked branches of a young oak, and went off to his
dinner. Arriving there, he straightway discovered that Mike, besides
frying bacon and making a pot of muddy coffee and stirring up a
bannock, had been engaged also in what passed with him for thinking.

"Them fellers don't know nothin' about minin'," he began when he had
poured himself a cup of coffee and turned the pot with the handle
toward Murphy. "They's no gold there, where we're diggin', I know
there's no gold! They's no sign of gold. They can dig a hunnerd feet
down, an' they won't find no gold! Why, in Minnesota, that time--"

"A-ah, now, le's have none av Minnesota," Murphy broke in upon Mike's
gobbling--no other word expresses Mike's manner of speech, or comes
anywhere near to giving any idea of his mushy mouthing of words. "An'
who iver said they was after gold, now?"

Mike's jaw went slack while he stared dully at his partner. "An' if
they ain't after gold, what they diggin' fer, then?" he demanded, when
he had collected what he could of his scattered thoughts.

"A-ah, now, an' thot's a diffrunt story, Mike, me boy." Murphy broke
off a piece of bannock, on the side least burned, and nodded his head
in a peculiarly knowing manner. "Av ye could kape yer tongue quiet
fr'm clappin' all ye know, Mike, I cud tell ye somethin'--I cud thot."

"Wh-why, nobudy ever heard _me_ talkin' things that's tol' in secret,"
Mike made haste to asseverate. "Why, one time in Minnesota, they was a
feller, he tol' _me_, min' yuh, things 't he wouldn't tell his own
mthrrr!" Mike, poor man, could not say mother at all. He just buzzed
with his tongue and let it go at that. But Murphy was used to his
peculiarities and guessed what he meant.

"An' there's where he showed respick fer the auld lady," he commended
drily, and winked at his cup of coffee.

"An' he tol' _me_, mind yuh, all about a mrrer" (which was as close as
he could come to murder) "an' he _knew_, mind ye, who it was, an' he