e it and
attempted to break away a fragment with his fingers. At this he
failed. Rubbing off the dust and sand wherewith old mother nature was
beginning to cover it anew, he saw little spots, at which he scratched
with his nails.

"Awful cold it's gittin'," he drawled to himself, and sitting down on
the meagre bank of earth he once more thrust his hands beneath his coat
and looked at the outcropping dismally.

He had doubtless been gone from the cabin half an hour, and not a
stroke had he given with his pick, when, as he sat there looking at the
ground, the voice of Keno came on the wind from the door of the shack.
Arising, Jim started at once towards his home, leaving his pick on the
hill-side a rod or two below.

"What is it?" he called, as he neared the house.

"Calamerty!" yelled Keno, and he disappeared within the door.

Jim almost made haste.

"What kind of a calamity?" said he, as he entered the room. "What's
went wrong?"

"The lemon-pie!" said Keno, whose face was a study in the art of
expressing consternation.

"Oh," said Jim, instantly relieved, "is that all?"

"All?" echoed Keno. "By jinks! I can't make another before it's
Christmas, to save my neck, and I used all the sugar and nearly all the
flour we had."

"Is it a hopeless case?" inquired Jim.

"Some might not think so," poor Keno replied. "I scoured out the old
Dutch oven and I've got her in a-bakin', but--"

"Well, maybe she ain't so worse."

"Jim," answered Keno, tragically, "I didn't find out till I had her
bakin' fine. Then I looked at the bottle I thought was the lemon
extract, and, by jinks! what do you think?"

"I don't feel up to the arts of creatin' lemon-pies," confessed the
miner, warming himself before the fire. "What happened?"

"You have to have lemon extract--you know that?" said Keno.

"All right."

"Well, by jinks, Jim, it wasn't lemon extract after all! It was
hair-oil!"

A terrible moment of silence ensued.

Then Jim said, "Was it all the hair-oil I had?"

"Every drop," said Keno.

"Wal," drawled the miner, sagely, "don't take on too hard. Into each
picnic some rain must fall."

"But the boys won't eat it," answered Keno, inconsolably.

"You don't know," replied Jim. "You never can tell what people will
eat on Christmas till the follerin' day. They'll take to anything that
looks real pretty and smells seasonable. What did I do with my pick?"

"You must have left it behind," said Keno. "You