e, and remarked:

"'Pears to me Blizzer's beginnin' to look scrumptious. He used to be the
shabbiest man in camp."

Through the open door the boys saw Blizzer carrying a pail of water; and
though water-carrying in the American manner is not an especially
graceful performance, Blizzer certainly looked unusually neat.

Palette, who had spoiled many canvases and paintbrushes in the East,
attentively studied Blizzer in detail, and found his hair was combed,
his shirt buttoned at the collar, and his trowsers lacking the
California soil which always adorns the seat and knees of orthodox
mining pantaloons.

"It's her as did it," said Pat Fadden; "an' 'tain't all she's done. Fhat
d'ye tink she did dhis mornin'? I was a-fixin' me pork, jist as ivery
other bye in camp allers does it, an' jist then who should come along
but hersilf. I tuk off me pork, and comminced me breakfast, when sez she
to me, sez she, 'Ye don't ate it widout gravy, do ye?' 'Gravy, is it?'
sez I. 'Nobody iver heard of gravy here,' sez I. 'Thin it's toime,' sez
she, an' she poured off the fat, an' crumbled a bit of cracker in the
pan, an' put in some wather, an' whin I thought the ould thing 'ud blow
up for the shteam it made, she poured the gravy on me plate--yes, she
did."

There were but a few men at Tough Case who were not willing to have
their daily fare improved, and as Mrs. Blizzer did not make a tour of
instruction, the boys made it convenient to stand near Mrs. Blizzer's
own fire, and see the mysteries of cooking.

As a natural consequence, Sim Ripson began to have inquiries for
articles which he had never heard of, much less sold, and he found a
hurried trip to 'Frisco was an actual business necessity.

As several miners took their departure, after one of these culinary
lessons, Arkansas Bill, with a mysterious air, took Fourteenth Street
aside.

"Forty," said he, in a most appealing tone, "ken _you_ see what 'twas
about? She kep' a-lookin' at my left han' all the time, ez ef she thort
there wuz somethin' the matter with it. Mebbe she thort I was tuckin'
biscuits up my sleeves, like keerds in a live game. _Ken_ you see any
thin' the matter with that paw?"

The aristocratic young reprobate gave the hand a critical glance, and
replied:

"Perhaps she thought you didn't know what buttons and buttonholes were
made for."

"Thunder!" exclaimed the miner, with an expression of countenance which
Archimedes might have worn when he made his famou