"Freightin'," said he, "is twenty dollars a ton; and at that rate it'll cost you about thirty dollars, you dirty hippopotamus. These ain't no safe-movers, these mules!" Unmoved, I clambered up beside him. "I want a job," said I, "for to-day only." "Do ye now?" "Can you give me one?" "I can, mebbe. And do you understand the inner aspirations of mules, maybe?" "I was brought up on a farm." "And the principles of elementary navigation by dead reckoning?" I looked at him blankly. "I mean mudholes," he explained. "Can you keep out of them?" "I can try." He pulled up the team, handed me the reins, and clambered over the wheel. "You're hired. At six o'clock I'll find you and pay you off. You get twenty-five dollars." "What am I to do?" "You go to the shore and you rustle about whenever you see anything that looks like freight; and you look at it, and when you see anything marked with a diamond and an H inside of it, you pile it on and take it up to Howard Mellin & Company. And if you can't lift it, then leave it for another trip, and bullyrag those skinflints at H. M. & Co.'s to send a man down to help you. And if you don't know where they live, find out; and if you bog them mules down I'll skin you alive, big as you are. And anyway, you're a fool to be working in this place for twenty-five dollars a day, which is one reason I'm so glad to find you just now." "What's that, John?" inquired a cool, amused voice. McGlynn and I looked around. A tall, perfectly dressed figure stood on the sidewalk surveying us quizzically. This was a smooth-shaven man of perhaps thirty-five years of age, grave faced, clean cut, with an air of rather ponderous slow dignity that nevertheless became his style very well. He was dressed in tall white hat, a white winged collar, a black stock, a long tailed blue coat with gilt buttons, an embroidered white waistcoat, dapper buff trousers, and varnished boots. He carried a polished cane and wore several heavy pieces of gold jewellery--a watch fob, a scarf-pin, and the like. His movements were leisurely, his voice low. It seemed to me, then, that somehow the perfection of his appointments and the calm deliberation of his movement made him more incongruous and remarkable than did the most bizarre whims of the miners. "Is it yourself, Judge Girvin?" replied McGlynn, "I'm just telling this young man that he can't have the job of driving my little California canaries for but one day because I've hired a fine lawyer from the East at two hundred and seventy-five a month to drive my mules for me." "You have done well," Judge Girvin in his grave, courteous tones. "For the whole business of a lawyer is to know how to manage mules and asses so as to make them pay!"