His bit of a guest seemed to think very hard, but at last he nodded as before.
"Well, string my pearls," said the miner to himself, "if somebody 'ain't been mean and low!" He added, cheerfully, "Wal, it's easier to live down a poor name than it is to live up to a fine one, any day, but we'll name you somethin' else, I reckon, right away. And ain't that dolly nice?"
The two were in the midst of appreciating the charms of her ladyship when the cabin door was abruptly opened and in came a coatless, fat, little, red-headed man, puffing like a bellows and pulling down his shirtsleeves with a great expenditure of energy, only to have them immediately crawl back to his elbows.
"Hullo, Keno," drawled the lanky Jim. "I thought you was mad and gone away and died."
"Me? Not me!" puffed the visitor.
"What's that?" and he nodded himself nearly off his balance towards the tiny guest he saw upon a stool.
With a somewhat belated bark, Tintoretto suddenly came out from his boot-chewing contest underneath the table and gave the new-comer an apoplectic start.
"Hey!" he cried. "Hey! By jinks! a whole menajry!"
"That's the pup," said Jim. "And, Keno, here's a poor little skeezucks that I found a-sittin' in the brush, 'way over to Coyote Valley. I fetched him home last night, and I was just about to take him down to camp and show him to the boys."
"By jinks!" said Keno. "Alive!"