“Well, what you goin’ to do with him, Jim?” inquired Field, after a moment.

“Oh, I’ll grow him up,” said Jim.  “And some day I’ll send him to college.”

“College be hanged!” said Field.  “A lot of us best men in Borealis never went to college—­and we’re proud of it!”

“So the little feller said nobody wanted him, did he?” asked the blacksmith.  “Well, I wouldn’t mind his stayin’ ’round the shop.  Where do you s’pose he come from first?  And painted like a little Piute Injun!  No wonder he’s a scared little tike.”

“I ain’t the one which scares him,” announced a man whose hair, beard, and eyes all stuck out amazingly.  “If I’d ‘a’ found him first he’d like me same as he takes to Jim.”

“Speakin’ of catfish, where the little feller come from original is what gits to me,” said Field, the father of Borealis, reflectively.  “You see, if he’s four or five months old, why he’s sure undergrowed.  You could drink him up in a cupful of coffee and never even cough.  And bein’ undergrowed, why, how could he go on a rabbit-drive along with the Injuns?  I’ll bet you there’s somethin’ mysterious about his origin.”

“Huh!  Don’t you jump onto no little shaver’s origin when you ’ain’t got any too much to speak of yourself,” the blacksmith commanded.  “He’s as big as any little skeezucks of his size!”

“Kin he read an’ write?” asked a person of thirty-six, who had “picked up” the mentioned accomplishments at the age of thirty-five.

“He’s alive and smart as mustard!” put in Keno, a champion by right of prior acquaintance with the timid little man.

“Wal, that’s all right, but mustard don’t do no sums in ’rithmetic,” said the bar-keep.  “I’m kind of stuck, myself, on this here pup.”

Tintoretto had been busily engaged making friends in any direction most handily presented.  He wound sinuously out of the barkeep’s reach, however, with pup-wise discrimination.  The attention of the company was momentarily directed to the small dog, who came in for not a few of the camp’s outspoken compliments.

“He’s mebbe all right, but he’s homely as Aunt Marier comin’ through the thrashin’-machine,” decided the teamster.

The carpenter added:  “He’s so all-fired awkward he can’t keep step with hisself.”

“Wal, he ain’t so rank in his judgment as some I could indicate,” drawled Jim, prepared to defend both pup and foundling to the last extent.  “At least, he never thought he was smart, abscondin’ with a little free sample of a brain.”

“What kind of a mongrel is he, anyway?” inquired Bone.

“Thorough-breed,” replied old Jim.  “There ain’t nothing in him but dog.”

The blacksmith was still somewhat longingly regarding the pale little man who continued to cling to the miner’s collar.  “What’s his name?” said he.

“Tintoretto,” answered Jim, still on the subject of his yellowish pup.