?" insisted the carpenter.

"That's what," said Jim, and reluctantly he brought the tale to its
final conclusion, adding his theory of the loss of the child by the
Indians on their hunt, and bearing down hard on the one little speech
that the tiny foundling had made just this morning.

The rough men were silenced by this. One by one they took off their
hats again, smoothed their hair, and otherwise made themselves a trifle
prettier to look upon.

"Well, what you goin' to do with him, Jim?" inquired Field, after a
moment.

"Oh, I'll grow him up," said Jim. "And some day I'll send him to
college."

"College be hanged!" said Field. "A lot of us best men in Borealis
never went to college--and we're proud of it!"

"So the little feller said nobody wanted him, did he?" asked the
blacksmith. "Well, I wouldn't mind his stayin' 'round the shop. Where
do you s'pose he come from first? And painted like a little Piute
Injun! No wonder he's a scared little tike."

"I ain't the one which scares him," announced a man whose hair, beard,
and eyes all stuck out amazingly. "If I'd 'a' found him first he'd
like me same as he takes to Jim."

"Speakin' of catfish, where the little feller come from original is
what gits to me," said Field, the father of Borealis, reflectively.
"You see, if he's four or five months old, why he's sure undergrowed.
You could drink him up in a cupful of coffee and never even cough. And
bein' undergrowed, why, how could he go on a rabbit-drive along with
the Injuns? I'll bet you there's somethin' mysterious about his
origin."

"Huh! Don't you jump onto no little shaver's origin when you 'ain't
got any too much to speak of yourself," the blacksmith commanded.
"He's as big as any little skeezucks of his size!"

"Kin he read an' write?" asked a person of thirty-six, who had "picked
up" the mentioned accomplishments at the age of thirty-five.

"He's alive and smart as mustard!" put in Keno, a champion by right of
prior acquaintance with the timid little man.

"Wal, that's all right, but mustard don't do no sums in 'rithmetic,"
said the bar-keep. "I'm kind of stuck, myself, on this here pup."

Tintoretto had been busily engaged making friends in any direction most
handily presented. He wound sinuously out of the barkeep's reach,
however, with pup-wise discrimination. The attention of the company
was momentarily directed to the small dog, who came in for not a few of
the camp's outspoken c