ough the keyhole, and followed by an immediate scampering of
the perpetrators down stairs. This well-known sound always roused the
idiot to fury; and the peaceable persuasions, and even the gentle
violence of Tiffles, were needed to keep him from relinquishing his work
and springing to the door.

He was a most intelligent and useful idiot. He could measure distances
more accurately than either of the three, and could ply the saw, hammer,
plane, or hatchet (Tiffles brought all these tools with him) like a
carpenter. His strength and skill were so great, that Tiffles found
himself gratefully relieved from the necessity of lifting, or directing.
Marcus Wilkeson, who had also thrown off his coat with a manful
determination to do a hard day's work, in the hope of tiring out and
driving away the sadness that possessed him, put on the garment again,
and sat on a front bench, vacantly staring like an idiot at the idiot,
and all the while thinking, gloomily, of New York. Patching stalked
about the hall, and criticized the work as it progressed, from numerous
angles of observation; but even he confessed that he could make no
improvement on Stoop's highly artistic disposition of things.

The idiot worked on steadily and swiftly, and only two things
interrupted him. The first was the "Boo!" yelled through the keyhole, as
heretofore described. The second was the unrolling of portions of the
panorama as they were taken out of the boxes, fastened together, and
attached to the rollers.

As the canvas was unwound, Stoop would drop his saw, or hammer, or other
tool, and gaze, with his large mouth and small eyes wide open, at the
pictorial marvels successively disclosed. "Blame it!" said he; "a'n't
that splendid?" or, "By jingo! look at that!" or, "Thunder! don't that
beat all?" The tigers' tails and the elephants' trunks, the alligators'
snouts and the boa constrictor's convolutions, he recognized at once. He
had "read all about 'em in Olney's Jogriffy."

"He is an idiot of taste," thought Patching. "I wonder what they call
him an idiot for?" thought Tiffles. "It's a pity all the people aren't
idiots," said Marcus Wilkeson to Tiffles. "Your panorama would be
patronized and appreciated then." It was Marcus's first approach to a
joke that day.

By four o'clock in the afternoon the Panorama of Africa was all up, the
rollers and the curtain in good working order, and everything ready for
the eventful night. Stoop had taken a lesson at t