The old man used to utilize the oven of the cooking stove for thawing his dynamite. Occasionally, he would forget that the dynamite was there until it was heated to the danger point. These little inadvertencies at last strained the nerves of Roynor beyond the elastic limit. He remonstrated to his aged partner with all the epithetitious sesquipedalian terminology of which he was capable, but nothing in the way of language or dynamite had any terrors for the old man. "Andy," said Roynor, finally, "if you are not more careful with that dynamite, we are going to separate, and we are going to separate the very next time you put any dynamite in the oven." The following evening, as Roynor was returning from his day's work, and when nigh the shack where his partner was cooking, he saw the shack instantly convert itself into a blinding flash, which solidified into numerous scattered débris that flew by him and fell round him in abundance. When he recovered from the stunning shock of the explosion and dazedly looked about him, he saw many fragmentary evidences of the repetition of the prospector's carelessness. "Well, Andy," he sadly remarked, "I told you we should separate the next time you did it. We have separated all right--particularly you." THE WELL-DIGGER'S CASUALTIES At my laboratory near Lake Hopatcong, one of the natives, who had made a reputation as a well-digger, and claimed to be able to descend through more rock in a day than could any other living man, thought that his strenuous habitude would adapt him to the manufacture of explosive materials, and with this in view he applied to me for a position. My foreman gave him a job in which his duty was to assist with the rolling of motorite. The foreman gave the fellow explicit instructions about the care necessary to keep his fingers from getting in between the rollers, as it would not only prove uncomfortable for him were he to shed a finger or a hand, but it would also spoil the motorite by mixing it with his lacerations.... Almost at once, the end of one finger went. Immediately, the well-digger was discharged, for his own sake and for the sake of motorite. The man next took a contract to dig a well for one of the cottagers on the Lake. It was in the early winter. The weather was cold, and his dynamite froze very hard. He placed it in a bucket of boiling hot water, which thawed the outer stratum of the frozen stick, overheating it and rendering it very sensitive, while the core remained frozen solid. He was too active and impatient a workman to wait long for a stick of dynamite to thaw, so he took the partly thawed stick, seized a hatchet, and proceeded to chop off one end of it.