On the morning after his arrival McGinnis rolled early out of his blankets, ate his breakfast of flapjacks and water, and put his hammer in his hip pocket, where some men put a gun who do not know how to carry a gun.  McGinnis spoke to no one in particular, but headed up into the mouth of the curving valley where stood the silent works of the New Jersey Gold Mills Company.  He was not cast down because he found no one whom he could ask for work.  He whistled as he walked through the open and barn-like building, looking about him with the eye of a man who had seen gold mills before that time.

“They’ve got their plates fixed at a lovely angle!” said he; “and there’s about enough mercury on ’em to make calomel for a sick cat.  There’s been talent in this mill, me boy!”

He crawled up the ore chute into the bin, and cast a critical gaze upon the rock heaped up close to the crusher.  Then he examined the battery of stamps with silent awe.  “This,” said McGinnis, softly to himself, “is the end of the whole and intire earth!  Is it a confectionery shop they’ve got, I wonder?  They do well to mash sugar with them lemon squeezers, to say nothing of the Homestake refractories.”

He passed on about the mill in his tour of inspection, still whistling and still critical, until he came to the patent labor-saving ore crusher, which some inventor had sold to the former manager of the New Jersey Gold Mills Company, along with other things.  McGinnis drifted to this instinctively, as does the born mechanician, to the gist of any problem in mechanics.

“Take shame to ye fer this, me man, whoivver ye were,” said McGinnis, and the blood shot up under his freckles in indignation.  “This is so bad it’s not only unmechanical and unprofissional—­it’s absolutely unsportsmanlike!”

His ardor overcame him, and, hammer in hand, he swung down into the ore bin underneath the crusher.  “Here’s where it is,” said he to himself.  “With the jaw screwed that tight, how cud ye hope to handle this stuff—­especially since the intilligent and discriminatin’ mine-boss was sendin’ down quartz that’s more’n half porphyry!  Yer little donkey injin, and yer little sugar mashers, and yer little lemon squeezer of a crusher—­yah!  It’s a grocery store ye’ve got, and not a stamp mill.  Loose off yer nut on the lower jaw, man; loose her off!”

McGinnis was a man of action.  In a moment he was tapping at the clenched bolt with the head of his bright steel hammer.  Slowly at first, and sullenly, for it had long been used to treatment that McGinnis called “unsportsmanlike”; then gently and kindly as it felt the hand of the master, the head of the bolt began to turn, until at length the workman was satisfied.  Then he turned also the corresponding nut on the opposite face of the jaw, swung the great steel jaw back to the place where he fancied it, and made all fast again.  “She’s but a rat-trap,” said he to himself, “but it’s only fair to give the rat-trap its show.”