art. He
must make no blunders.

He toiled like two men, each swifter and more savagely efficient than
himself; he upset the prim, old he-maidenish order of that carefully
packed, spick-and-span camp; he rumpled the beds; strewed old clothes,
books, candles, specimens, pipes and cigarette papers with lavish hand;
made untidy, sprawling heaps of tin plates; knives, forks and spoons;
spilled candle-grease and tobacco on the scoured table; and generally
gave things a cozy and habitable appearance.

He gave a hundred deft touches here and there. He spread an open book
face downward on the table. (It was "Alice in Wonderland," and he opened
it at the Mock-Turtle.) Meanwhile an unoccupied eye snatched titles from
a shelf of books against possible question; he penned a short note to
himself--Mr. Tobe Long--in Gwin's handwriting, folded the note to
creases, twisted it to a spill, lit it, burned a corner of it, pinched
it out and threw it under the table; and, while doing these and other
things, he somehow managed to shed every article of Jeff Bransford's
clothing and to put on the work-stained garments of a miner.

The perspiration on his face was no stage make-up, but good, honest
sweat. He rubbed stone-dust and sand on his sweaty arms and into his
sweaty hair; he rubbed most of it from his hair and into the two-days'
stubble on his face, simultaneously fishing razor and mug from the
trunk, leaving them in evidence on the table. He worked stone-dust into
his ears, behind his ears; he grimed it on forehead and neck; he even
dropped a little into his shoes, which all this while had been
performing independent miracles to make the camp look comfortable. He
threw on a dingy cap, thrust in the cap a miner's candlestick, with a
lighted candle, that it might properly drip upon him while he arranged
further details--and so faced the world as Tobe Long, a stooped and
overworked man!

Mr. Tobe Long, working with feverish haste, dug a small cave half-way
down the steep side of the dump farthest from the road and buried
therein a tightly rolled bundle containing every article appertaining to
the defunct Bransford, with the single exception of the little eohippus;
a pocketknife, which a miner must have to cut powder and fuse, having
been found in the trunk--what time also the little turquoise horse was
transferred to Mr. Long's pocket to bring him luck in his new career--a
poor thing compared with the cowman's keen blade, but better for