The men seated themselves in two home-made chairs. The raccoon, evidently from old winter-time habit, waddled in a dignified fashion to the fireless stove, where he curled up like a door-mat with keen, bright eyes. Mike's gaze roamed about the apartment. "You are a great scientist," he observed, intending the remark for a compliment. "In a way, in a way," replied the old man humbly. "One must occupy the mind when one is alone, and what task more fitting to our highest faculties than that of investigating, with all due reverence, the workings of God's mechanism?" He said it with a simple piety which could not provoke a smile. Michaïl Lafond caught himself wondering what he did there. Surely there was nothing to interest him in stuffed insects and a garrulous old man, especially as the conversation insisted on retaining its formal footing. "You are not a miner?" the entomologist inquired, after a moment's pause. "No," replied Mike. "I am glad to hear it. I like not this eager scrambling for what does so little good. I too once---- But now I am content; yes, content. There is always good if one will but find it. I myself might with justice be accused of being a miner. I find my leads, I develop them, I assay my ores; but always in miniature--on a small scale." Then, in a flash, Michaïl Lafond saw at least the outlines of his plan, and he knew why he had come in here to talk to the garrulous old man. "You know the assay, then?" he inquired conversationally. "In a modest way--a few simple tests." "But that is much. Do you not know that it is at Rapid, in the School of Mines, that the nearest assayer is? You have a profession here at your lands." A sudden scream broke through the apartment, a rush of wings, a growl. The old man ran nimbly to the stove, and rescued the little raccoon from the savage attacks of a magpie. The magpie sailed back to his perch on one of the butterfly cases, where he ruffled his feathers indignantly. The raccoon curled up in the old man's lap. "You are French?" inquired the latter, with more interest than he had hitherto shown. "I have some French blood," replied Lafond cautiously. "I knew it," said Durand, immensely pleased. "I am rarely mistaken. It was a twist of your words that suggested it, an idiom. _Et maintenant nous pouvons causer_," he added in the purest Parisian accent. "_Oui, oui, oui,_" cried the half-breed, suddenly swept up by an uncontrollable excitement he could not himself understand. "_La belle langue!_"