By this time we were no longer astonished when Briggs rose also, and not only accompanied the sinister-looking stranger to the empty cabin, but assisted him in negotiating with its owner for a fortnight’s occupancy.  Nevertheless, we eagerly assailed Briggs on his return for some explanation of this singular change in his attitude toward the stranger.  He coolly reminded us, however, that while his intention of excluding ruffianly adventurers from the camp remained the same, he had no right to go back on the stranger’s sentiments, which were evidently in accord with our own, and although Mr. Bulger’s appearance was inconsistent with them, that was only an additional reason why we should substitute a mild firmness for that violence which we all deprecated, but which might attend his abrupt dismissal.  We were all satisfied except Mosby, who had not yet recovered from Briggs’s change of front, which he was pleased to call “craw-fishing.”  “Seemed to me his account of his business was extraordinary satisfactory!  Sorter filled the bill all round—­no mistake thar,” he suggested, with a malicious irony.  “I like a man that’s outspoken.”

“I understood him very well,” said Briggs, quietly.

“In course you did.  Only when you’ve settled in your mind whether he was describing horse-stealing or tract-distributing, mebbe you’ll let me know.”

It would seem, however, that Briggs did not interrogate the stranger again regarding it, nor did we, who were quite content to leave matters in Briggs’s hands.  Enough that Mr. Bulger moved into the empty cabin the next day, and, with the aid of a few old boxes from the grocery, which he quickly extemporized into tables and chairs, and the purchase of some necessary cooking utensils, soon made himself at home.  The rest of the camp, now thoroughly aroused, made a point of leaving their work in the ditches, whenever they could, to stroll carelessly around Bulger’s tenement in the vague hope of satisfying a curiosity that had become tormenting.  But they could not find that he was doing anything of a suspicious character—­except, perhaps, from the fact that it was not outwardly suspicious, which I grieve to say did not lull them to security.  He seemed to be either fixing up his cabin or smoking in his doorway.  On the second day he checked this itinerant curiosity by taking the initiative himself, and quietly walking from claim to claim and from cabin to cabin with a pacific but by no means a satisfying interest.  The shadow of his tall figure carrying his inseparable gun, which had not yet apparently “stood in the corner,” falling upon an excavated bank beside the delving miners, gave them a sense of uneasiness they could not explain; a few characteristic yells of boisterous hilarity from their noontide gathering under a cottonwood somehow ceased when Mr. Bulger was seen gravely approaching, and his casual stopping before a poker party in the gulch actually caused one of the most reckless gamblers