Derrick was provoked that his mule should have made all this trouble, and was anxious to discover the full extent of the mischief done, but he could not help laughing when he reached the scene of confusion. The first object he saw was Harry himself, standing still and gazing demurely at him with the wondering look which was his most common expression. He was hitched in front of a string of mules which were attached to a train of empty cars, and was evidently prepared to act as their leader. The boy driver of these mules, with many muttered exclamations, was trying to disentangle their harness from the snarl it had got into, and in one of the cars stood Paul Evert, looking somewhat dilapidated and greatly disgusted. "Hullo, Derrick!" he called out. "Where did that mule come from?" "Why, that's Harry, my bumping-mule," answered Derrick as he came up laughing. "Bumping-mule! I should think he was," said Paul. "He made these cars stop so quick that I was almost bumped out of 'em, and the skin's all knocked off my nose. I don't see what he wanted to come bumping along this way for." "Why, I told him you were coming," said Derrick, "and I suppose he wanted to welcome you to the mine." "Well, I'm sorry you told him, and--" Just then the driver shouted "Gee up!" and Harry Mule, anxious to do his duty in his new position, started ahead so briskly as to pull the other three mules promptly into line and give a violent jerk to the cars. Losing his balance with this unexpected motion, Paul sat suddenly down in the bottom of the car he was in, and there he wisely decided to remain. When they reached the junction, Derrick asked Paul to wait for him until he and Harry Mule had distributed the empty cars to their several destinations. Attracted by its cheerful light, Paul stepped inside the blacksmith's shop, where Job Taskar, who was hammering away as busily as usual, glanced up as he entered, but paid no further attention to him. A minute later the smith, who had just begun his day's work, and still wore his coat, pulled it off and flung it to one side. Something dropped from one of its pockets unnoticed by him as he did so, and Paul was on the point of calling his attention to it. He did not, however, because the smith's helper, a slim, dreary-looking young man, to whom nobody ever paid much attention, also noticed the falling object, and picked it up without being seen by Job. Gazing at it curiously for a moment, he restored it, as Paul thought, to the pocket from which it had fallen. In reality, he slipped it into a pocket of his own coat which lay under that of his boss.