right
to go back on the stranger's sentiments, which were evidently in accord
with our own, and although Mr. Bulger's appearance was inconsistent with
them, that was only an additional reason why we should substitute a
mild firmness for that violence which we all deprecated, but which might
attend his abrupt dismissal. We were all satisfied except Mosby, who had
not yet recovered from Briggs's change of front, which he was pleased
to call "craw-fishing." "Seemed to me his account of his business was
extraordinary satisfactory! Sorter filled the bill all round--no mistake
thar," he suggested, with a malicious irony. "I like a man that's
outspoken."

"I understood him very well," said Briggs, quietly.

"In course you did. Only when you've settled in your MIND whether he
was describing horse-stealing or tract-distributing, mebbe you'll let ME
know."

It would seem, however, that Briggs did not interrogate the stranger
again regarding it, nor did we, who were quite content to leave matters
in Briggs's hands. Enough that Mr. Bulger moved into the empty cabin the
next day, and, with the aid of a few old boxes from the grocery, which
he quickly extemporized into tables and chairs, and the purchase of some
necessary cooking utensils, soon made himself at home. The rest of the
camp, now thoroughly aroused, made a point of leaving their work in
the ditches, whenever they could, to stroll carelessly around Bulger's
tenement in the vague hope of satisfying a curiosity that had become
tormenting. But they could not find that he was doing anything of a
suspicious character--except, perhaps, from the fact that it was
not OUTWARDLY suspicious, which I grieve to say did not lull them to
security. He seemed to be either fixing up his cabin or smoking in his
doorway. On the second day he checked this itinerant curiosity by taking
the initiative himself, and quietly walking from claim to claim and from
cabin to cabin with a pacific but by no means a satisfying interest. The
shadow of his tall figure carrying his inseparable gun, which had not
yet apparently "stood in the corner," falling upon an excavated bank
beside the delving miners, gave them a sense of uneasiness they could
not explain; a few characteristic yells of boisterous hilarity from
their noontide gathering under a cottonwood somehow ceased when Mr.
Bulger was seen gravely approaching, and his casual stopping before
a poker party in the gulch actually caused one of the most