Accordingly from time to time he added an artistic touch to Mr. Long--grime under his fingernails, a smudge of smut on an eyebrow. His hands displeased him. After some experimenting to get the proper heat of it he grasped the partially cooled gad with the drill-pincers and held it very lightly to a favored few of those portions of the hand known to chiromaniacs as the mounts of Jupiter, Saturn and other extinct immortals. Satisfactory blisters-while-you-wait were thus obtained. These were pricked with a pin; some were torn to tatters, with dust and coal rubbed in to give them a venerable appearance. The pain was no light matter; but Mr. Long had a real affection for Mr. Bransford's neck, and it is trifles like these that make perfection. The next expedient was even more heroic. Mr. Long assiduously put stone-dust in one eye, leaving it tearful, bloodshot and violently inflamed; and the other one was sympathetically red. "Bit o' steel in my eye," explained Mr. Long. Unselfish devotion such as this is all too rare. All this while, at proper intervals, Mr. Long sharpened and resharpened that one long-suffering drill. He tripped into the tunnel and smote a mighty blow upon the country rock with a pick--therefore qualifying that pick for repointing--and laid it on the forge as next on the list. What further outrage he meditated is not known, for he now heard a horse coming up the trail. He was beating out a merry tattoo when a white-hatted head rose through a trapdoor--rose above the level of the dump, rather. Hammer in hand, Long straightened up joyfully as best he could, but could not straighten up the telltale droop of his shoulders. It was not altogether assumed, either, this hump. Jeff--Mr. Long--had not done so much work of this sort for years and there was a very real pain between his shoulderblades. Still, but for the exigencies of art, he might have borne his neck less turtlewise than he did. "Hello! Get him? Where's your pardner?" "Watching the gap." The young man, rather breathless from the climb, answered the last question first as he led his horse on the dump. "No, we didn't get him; but he can't get away. Hiding somewhere in the Basin afoot. Found his horse. Pretty well done up." The insolence of the outlaw's letter smote him afresh; he reddened. "No tracks going out of the Basin. Two of our friends guarding the other end. They say he can't get out over the cliffs anywhere. That so?" The speech came jerkily; he was still short of breath from his scramble. "Not without a flying machine," said Long. "No way out that I know of, except where the wagonroad goes. What's he done?" "Robbery! Murder! We'll see that he don't get out by the wagonroad," asserted the youth confidently. "Watch the gaps and starve him out!" "Oh, speaking of starving," said Tobe, "go into the tent and I'll bring you some supper while you tell me about it. Baked up another batch of bread on the chance you'd come back." "Why, thank you very much, Mr.----"