hat for tidal differentiation. He took the altitude with
a pocket-aneroid, and the temperature with a pocket-thermometer. Finally
he said, with a stately bow:

"It is finished. Shall we return, gentlemen?"

He took up the line of march for the tavern, and the crowd fell into
his wake, earnestly discussing and admiring the Extraordinary Man, and
interlarding guesses as to the origin of the tragedy and who the author
of it might he.

"My, but it's grand luck having him here--hey, boys?" said Ferguson.

"It's the biggest thing of the century," said Ham Sandwich. "It 'll go
all over the world; you mark my words."

"You bet!" said Jake Parker, the blacksmith. "It 'll boom this camp.
Ain't it so, Wells-Fargo?"

"Well, as you want my opinion--if it's any sign of how I think about it,
I can tell you this: yesterday I was holding the Straight Flush claim at
two dollars a foot; I'd like to see the man that can get it at sixteen
today."

"Right you are, Wells-Fargo! It's the grandest luck a new camp ever
struck. Say, did you see him collar them little rags and dirt and
things? What an eye! He just can't overlook a clue--'tain't in him."

"That's so. And they wouldn't mean a thing to anybody else; but to him,
why, they're just a book--large print at that."

"Sure's you're born! Them odds and ends have got their little old
secret, and they think there ain't anybody can pull it; but, land! when
he sets his grip there they've got to squeal, and don't you forget it."

"Boys, I ain't sorry, now, that he wasn't here to roust out the child;
this is a bigger thing, by a long sight. Yes, sir, and more tangled up
and scientific and intellectual."

"I reckon we're all of us glad it's turned out this way. Glad? 'George!
it ain't any name for it. Dontchuknow, Archy could 've learnt something
if he'd had the nous to stand by and take notice of how that man works
the system. But no; he went poking up into the chaparral and just missed
the whole thing."

"It's true as gospel; I seen it myself. Well, Archy's young. He'll know
better one of these days."

"Say, boys, who do you reckon done it?"

That was a difficult question, and brought out a world of unsatisfying
conjecture. Various men were mentioned as possibilities, but one by one
they were discarded as not being eligible. No one but young Hillyer had
been intimate with Flint Buckner; no one had really had a quarrel
with him; he had affronted every man who had tried to make up t