The work at the Great Snake interested him, as it did everybody. He occupied the morning about the works, poking into odd corners, questioning the workmen, making suggestions to Billy. He sent the horse dealer to Billy, and mentioned to the whim man that he might find a purchaser there. He often was enabled in his vaster leisure to perceive the little things that lacked and to point out their necessity to Billy, which individual was of course always duly grateful and hastened at once to remedy the defect. After a more or less lengthened visit the half-breed returned to camp. If it happened still to lack some time until dinner, he called on Moroney in the editorial rooms or exchanged sententious comments with Bill Martin, or chatted with one or the other of the visitors who happened to be in town. After dinner he disappeared until supper. The time was spent with Durand. The assaying was long since finished, but the two men had grown fond of each other's companionship. It was a silent companionship for the most part. Lafond smoked interminably his short black pipe, turned upside down, watching the naturalist setting carefully the delicate wings of a butterfly or arranging in a paper cylinder the skin of a bird, or searching, spectacled, in black volumes of Government reports. Occasionally, when Durand looked up from his absorption, they exchanged a few swift remarks, elided, compressed, telegraphic; for they understood each other so well that the unabridged form of speech was no longer necessary. On fine days they beat the brushy creek bottoms for the _Nitra_, the rare _Papilo_ which men supposed to be extinct. And then, after the early darkness of winter fell, they would be seized by strange obsessions of loquacity. Jacques, the raccoon, a ball of fur under the faint red stove, blinked at them shrewdly, wondering what it was all about.