“Awful cold it’s gittin’,” he drawled to himself, and sitting down on the meagre bank of earth he once more thrust his hands beneath his coat and looked at the outcropping dismally.

He had doubtless been gone from the cabin half an hour, and not a stroke had he given with his pick, when, as he sat there looking at the ground, the voice of Keno came on the wind from the door of the shack.  Arising, Jim started at once towards his home, leaving his pick on the hill-side a rod or two below.

“What is it?” he called, as he neared the house.

“Calamerty!” yelled Keno, and he disappeared within the door.

Jim almost made haste.

“What kind of a calamity?” said he, as he entered the room.  “What’s went wrong?”

“The lemon-pie!” said Keno, whose face was a study in the art of expressing consternation.

“Oh,” said Jim, instantly relieved, “is that all?”

“All?” echoed Keno.  “By jinks!  I can’t make another before it’s Christmas, to save my neck, and I used all the sugar and nearly all the flour we had.”

“Is it a hopeless case?” inquired Jim.

“Some might not think so,” poor Keno replied.  “I scoured out the old Dutch oven and I’ve got her in a-bakin’, but—­”

“Well, maybe she ain’t so worse.”

“Jim,” answered Keno, tragically, “I didn’t find out till I had her bakin’ fine.  Then I looked at the bottle I thought was the lemon extract, and, by jinks! what do you think?”

“I don’t feel up to the arts of creatin’ lemon-pies,” confessed the miner, warming himself before the fire.  “What happened?”

“You have to have lemon extract—­you know that?” said Keno.

“All right.”

“Well, by jinks, Jim, it wasn’t lemon extract after all!  It was hair-oil!”

A terrible moment of silence ensued.

Then Jim said, “Was it all the hair-oil I had?”

“Every drop,” said Keno.

“Wal,” drawled the miner, sagely, “don’t take on too hard.  Into each picnic some rain must fall.”

“But the boys won’t eat it,” answered Keno, inconsolably.

“You don’t know,” replied Jim.  “You never can tell what people will eat on Christmas till the follerin’ day.  They’ll take to anything that looks real pretty and smells seasonable.  What did I do with my pick?”

“You must have left it behind,” said Keno.  “You ain’t goin’ to hit the pie with your pick?”

“Wal, not till Christmas, anyway, Keno, and only then in case we’ve busted all the knives and saws trying to git it apart,” said Jim, reassuringly.

“Would you keep it, sure, and feed it to ’em all the same?” inquired Keno, forlornly, eager for a ray of hope.

“I certainly would,” replied the miner.  “They won’t know the diff between a lemon-pie and a can of tomatoes.  So I guess I’ll go and git my pick.  It may come on to snow, and then I couldn’t find it till the spring.”