a bit from the bed blanket, please. Ah, thanks.
Part wool--foreign make. Very well. A snip from some garment of
the child's, please. Thanks. Cotton. Shows wear. An excellent clue,
excellent. Pass me a pallet of the floor dirt, if you'll be so kind.
Thanks, many thanks. Ah, admirable, admirable! Now we know where we are,
I think.' You see, boys, he's got all the clues he wants now; he don't
need anything more. Now, then, what does this Extraordinary Man do? He
lays those snips and that dirt out on the table and leans over them
on his elbows, and puts them together side by side and studies
them--mumbles to himself, 'Female'; changes them around--mumbles,
'Six years old'; changes them this way and that--again mumbles: 'Five
teeth--one a-coming--Catholic--yarn--cotton--kip--damn that kip.' Then
he straightens up and gazes toward heaven, and plows his hands through
his hair--plows and plows, muttering, 'Damn that kip!' Then he stands up
and frowns, and begins to tally off his clues on his fingers--and gets
stuck at the ring-finger. But only just a minute--then his face glares
all up in a smile like a house afire, and he straightens up stately and
majestic, and says to the crowd, 'Take a lantern, a couple of you, and
go down to Injun Billy's and fetch the child--the rest of you go 'long
home to bed; good-night, madam; good-night, gents.' And he bows like
the Matterhorn, and pulls out for the tavern. That's his style, and the
Only--scientific, intellectual--all over in fifteen minutes--no
poking around all over the sage-brush range an hour and a half in a
mass-meeting crowd for him, boys--you hear me!"

"By Jackson, it's grand!" said Ham Sandwich. "Wells-Fargo, you've got
him down to a dot. He ain't painted up any exacter to the life in the
books. By George, I can just see him--can't you, boys?"

"You bet you! It's just a photograft, that's what it is."

Ferguson was profoundly pleased with his success, and grateful. He sat
silently enjoying his happiness a little while, then he murmured, with a
deep awe in his voice,

"I wonder if God made him?"

There was no response for a moment; then Ham Sandwich said, reverently,

"Not all at one time, I reckon."

II

At eight o'clock that evening two persons were groping their way past
Flint Buckner's cabin in the frosty gloom. They were Sherlock Holmes and
his nephew.

"Stop here in the road a moment, uncle," said Fetlock, "while I run to
my cabin; I won't be gone a min