the pouch.

The dentist approached the counter and leaned his elbows upon it. Three
men were in the room--a tall, lean young man, with a thick head of hair
surprisingly gray, who was playing with a half-grown great Dane puppy;
another fellow about as young, but with a jaw almost as salient as
McTeague's, stood at the letter-press taking a copy of a letter; a third
man, a little older than the other two, was pottering over a transit.
This latter was massively built, and wore overalls and low boots
streaked and stained and spotted in every direction with gray mud. The
dentist looked slowly from one to the other; then at length, "Is the
foreman about?" he asked.

The man in the muddy overalls came forward.

"What you want?"

He spoke with a strong German accent.

The old invariable formula came back to McTeague on the instant.

"What's the show for a job?"

At once the German foreman became preoccupied, looking aimlessly out of
the window. There was a silence.

"You hev been miner alretty?"

"Yes, yes."

"Know how to hendle pick'n shov'le?"

"Yes, I know."

The other seemed unsatisfied. "Are you a 'cousin Jack'?"

The dentist grinned. This prejudice against Cornishmen he remembered
too.

"No. American."

"How long sence you mine?"

"Oh, year or two."

"Show your hends." McTeague exhibited his hard, callused palms.

"When ken you go to work? I want a chuck-tender on der night-shift."

"I can tend a chuck. I'll go on to-night."

"What's your name?"

The dentist started. He had forgotten to be prepared for this.

"Huh? What?"

"What's the name?"

McTeague's eye was caught by a railroad calendar hanging over the desk.
There was no time to think.

"Burlington," he said, loudly.

The German took a card from a file and wrote it down.

"Give dis card to der boarding-boss, down at der boarding-haus, den gome
find me bei der mill at sex o'clock, und I set you to work."

Straight as a homing pigeon, and following a blind and unreasoned
instinct, McTeague had returned to the Big Dipper mine. Within a week's
time it seemed to him as though he had never been away. He picked up his
life again exactly where he had left it the day when his mother had sent
him away with the travelling dentist, the charlatan who had set up his
tent by the bunk house. The house McTeague had once lived in was still
there, occupied by one of the shift bosses and his family. The dentist
passed it on his way to and from th