"I put the last switch of tobaccy I had in the world into that pipe, just arter throwing myself outside of that quince of fish."
"Quience?" laughed the boy, "you mean _quintal_."
"Yis, and what's to come of Tim O'Rooney, if he doesn't git some more right spaddily. His intellect toppled all the mornin', and can't stand another such strain, or it'll be nipped in the bud afore it has reached the topmost round at the bar of fame."
"Why, Tim, you are growing poetical," called Elwood over his shoulder, not a little amused at his bewildering metaphors.
"We shall doubtless come across some friends before long who will be glad to supply you."
"What is it!" he asked, pausing in his paddling.
"If you saas a rid gintleman do yez jist rist till I takes aim and shoots him."
"Not blood-thirsty, but tobaccy thirsty. The haythen deal in the article, and if we saas one he must yield."
Elwood promised obedience, but they saw nothing of the coveted people whom they had been so anxious to avoid hitherto, but a half-hour later Howard said:
"Heigh-ho! Yonder is just the man you want to see!"
A single person dressed in the garb of a miner was standing on the shore leisurely surveying them as they came along. There could be no doubt that he was supplied with the noxious weed, for he was smoking a pipe with all the cool, deliberate enjoyment of a veteran at the business.
"Shall I head toward shore!" asked Elwood.
"Sartin, sartin. Oh that we had Mr. Shasta here that he might hurry to land wid the ould canoe!"
A few minutes sufficed to place the prow of the boat against the shore, and Tim O'Rooney sprung out. The miner, if such he was, stood with his hands in his pockets, looking sleepily at the stranger.
"How do yez do, William?" reaching out and shaking the hand which was rather reluctantly given him.
"Who you calling William?" demanded the miner gruffly.
"I beg yez pardon, but it was a slip of the tongue, Thomas."
"Did yez lave the wife and childer well?"
"Whose wife and childer you talking about?"
"Yez got over the cowld yez had the other day?"
"'Pears to me you know a blamed sight more about me than I do, stranger."
"My dear sir, I have the greatest affection for yez. The moment I seen yez a qua'ar faaling come over me, and I filt I must come ashore and shake you by the hand. I faals much better."