he boy, "you mean _quintal_."

"Yis, and what's to come of Tim O'Rooney, if he doesn't git some more
right spaddily. His intellect toppled all the mornin', and can't stand
another such strain, or it'll be nipped in the bud afore it has reached
the topmost round at the bar of fame."

"Why, Tim, you are growing poetical," called Elwood over his shoulder,
not a little amused at his bewildering metaphors.

"We shall doubtless come across some friends before long who will be
glad to supply you."

"Elwood!" called Tim.

"What is it!" he asked, pausing in his paddling.

"If you saas a rid gintleman do yez jist rist till I takes aim and
shoots him."

"Why so blood-thirsty?"

"Not blood-thirsty, but tobaccy thirsty. The haythen deal in the
article, and if we saas one he must yield."

Elwood promised obedience, but they saw nothing of the coveted people
whom they had been so anxious to avoid hitherto, but a half-hour later
Howard said:

"Heigh-ho! Yonder is just the man you want to see!"

A single person dressed in the garb of a miner was standing on the shore
leisurely surveying them as they came along. There could be no doubt
that he was supplied with the noxious weed, for he was smoking a pipe
with all the cool, deliberate enjoyment of a veteran at the business.

"Shall I head toward shore!" asked Elwood.

"Sartin, sartin. Oh that we had Mr. Shasta here that he might hurry to
land wid the ould canoe!"

A few minutes sufficed to place the prow of the boat against the shore,
and Tim O'Rooney sprung out. The miner, if such he was, stood with his
hands in his pockets, looking sleepily at the stranger.

"How do yez do, William?" reaching out and shaking the hand which was
rather reluctantly given him.

"Who you calling William?" demanded the miner gruffly.

"I beg yez pardon, but it was a slip of the tongue, Thomas."

"Who you calling Thomas?"

"Is your family well, my dear sir?"

"Whose family you talking about?"

"Did yez lave the wife and childer well?"

"Whose wife and childer you talking about?"

"Yez got over the cowld yez had the other day?"

"'Pears to me you know a blamed sight more about me than I do,
stranger."

"My dear sir, I have the greatest affection for yez. The moment I seen
yez a qua'ar faaling come over me, and I filt I must come ashore and
shake you by the hand. I faals much better."

"You don't say?"

"That I does. Would yez have the kindness to give me a wee bit of
tobaccy