The professor glanced up now and with an odd intentness in his look; no doubt his mind was still with his specimens. "You're very kind, I'm sure," he responded courteously; "but I have lunched already on my sandwiches. Thank you, Mr.----" He paused for a name. The other chuckled with new-found amiability. "You needn't 'Mister' me," he said. "I'm Budd, Jim Budd the Scorcher, and if any man in camp don't like my grub he's got the privilege of going hungry." "Ah, quite so, quite so," rejoined the scientist. "I'm very sure your cooking is excellent." "That's what the boys tell me," returned the scorcher; "but, by blood! I've got 'em educated. I'll just set them biscuits to raise, and then we'll have a chat." He re-entered the tent, limping noticeably, and from the interior his voice was heard mingled with the clatter of utensils in blasphemous denunciation of everything about him. During this explosion the scientist from Charbridge made a rather singular experiment. He rose, and after a cautious glance behind him he crept to the verge of the precipice, looked down into the water swirling over jagged rocks far below, and pulling up a sod of wire grass let it drop, and watched it sink and reappear in single straws that circled and sank again. This done, he went back to his specimens. The Scorcher's pibrock of vituperation had now changed to a tuneless chant, scarcely less vindictive in its cadence: Old John Rogers was burnt at the stake; His poor wife cried until her heart did break! he sang, and the professor's listening face took on an expression out of keeping with the meaningless doggerel, the look of one who responds to an inexorable call. "'Until her heart did break!'" he murmured. But when Budd appeared again he only asked if he was interested in geology. "I am if it's the sort that's got silver in it," replied the cook. "One does not look for silver in sandstone formation," the professor explained. "Do you mean to tell me the Almighty couldn't put silver in this here red rock?" Jim demanded, from the stone on which he had seated himself. "No," replied the professor guardedly: "I say only that He did not. However, here is a bit of quartz----" "Say!" interrupted the cook, "I'm a heap more interested in the specimen you've got in that bottle." He was staring at the polished cap of the flask. "Indeed, are you?" the other smiled a a tolerant smile. "Then perhaps you will do me the honor----" Budd seized the flask without a second invitation and raised it to his lips. He drank as dying men drink water, and when he stopped for lack of breath his face was fiery but for the white scar. As he lowered the bottle he met the professor's curious fixity of gaze, and wriggled uneasily before it. "Say, partner," he remonstrated, "your whiskey's all right; but I'm hanged if I like your eye! By blood! it goes ag'in me!"