Murphy spat far from him and hitched up his sagging overalls.  “Kin any man be trusted?” he inquired sardonically.  “He kin, says I, if it’s to his intrust.  I’m gittin’ my wages fer the diggin’, ain’t I?  Then it’s to me intrust to kape on diggin’!  Sure, me tongue niver wagged me belly outy a grub-stake yit, young feller!  I’m with ye on this, an’ thot’s me true word I’m givin’ ye.”

The professor hurried off to find Fred and urge him to let Murphy advise them upon the exact sites of their mines.  Murphy hung his hammer up in the forked branches of a young oak, and went off to his dinner.  Arriving there, he straightway discovered that Mike, besides frying bacon and making a pot of muddy coffee and stirring up a bannock, had been engaged also in what passed with him for thinking.

“Them fellers don’t know nothin’ about minin’,” he began when he had poured himself a cup of coffee and turned the pot with the handle toward Murphy.  “They’s no gold there, where we’re diggin’, I know there’s no gold!  They’s no sign of gold.  They can dig a hunnerd feet down, an’ they won’t find no gold!  Why, in Minnesota, that time—­”

“A-ah, now, le’s have none av Minnesota,” Murphy broke in upon Mike’s gobbling—­no other word expresses Mike’s manner of speech, or comes anywhere near to giving any idea of his mushy mouthing of words.  “An’ who iver said they was after gold, now?”

Mike’s jaw went slack while he stared dully at his partner.  “An’ if they ain’t after gold, what they diggin’ fer, then?” he demanded, when he had collected what he could of his scattered thoughts.

“A-ah, now, an’ thot’s a diffrunt story, Mike, me boy.”  Murphy broke off a piece of bannock, on the side least burned, and nodded his head in a peculiarly knowing manner.  “Av ye could kape yer tongue quiet fr’m clappin’ all ye know, Mike, I cud tell ye somethin’—­I cud thot.”

“Wh-why, nobudy ever heard me talkin’ things that’s tol’ in secret,” Mike made haste to asseverate.  “Why, one time in Minnesota, they was a feller, he tol’ me, min’ yuh, things ’t he wouldn’t tell his own mthrrr!” Mike, poor man, could not say mother at all.  He just buzzed with his tongue and let it go at that.  But Murphy was used to his peculiarities and guessed what he meant.

“An’ there’s where he showed respick fer the auld lady,” he commended drily, and winked at his cup of coffee.

“An’ he tol’ me, mind yuh, all about a mrrer” (which was as close as he could come to murder) “an’ he knew, mind ye, who it was, an’ he tol’ me—­an’ why, I wouldn’t ever say nothin’ an’ he knew it—­I doctrrrred his eyes, mind ye, mind ye, an’ the doctrrrs they couldn’t do nothin’—­an’ we was with this outfit that was puttin’ in a bridge” (only he couldn’t say bridge to save his life) “this was ’way back in Minnesota—­”

“A-ah, now ye come back to Minnesota, ye better quit yer travelin’ an’ eat yer dinner,” quelled Murphy impatiently.  “An’ le’s hear no more ’bout it.”