“Do you like that little dog?” he said, as Tintoretto renewed his overtures of companionship.  “Do you like old brother Jim and the pup?”

Solemnly the little pilgrim nodded.

“Want some breakfast, all pretty, in our own little house?”

Once more the quaint and grave little nod was forthcoming.

“All right.  We’ll have it bustin’ hot in the shake of a crockery animal’s tail,” announced the miner.

He carried the mite of a man inside and placed him again in the bunk, where the little fellow found his rabbit and drew it into his arms.

The banquet proved to be a repetition of the supper of the night before, except that two great flapjacks were added to the menu, greased with fat from the bacon and sprinkled a half-inch thick with soft brown sugar.

When the cook fetched his hungry little guest to the board the rabbit came as well.

“You ought to have a dolly,” decided Jim, with a knowing nod.  “If only I had the ingenuity I could make one, sure,” and throughout the meal he was planning the manufacture of something that should beat the whole wide world for cleverness.

The result of his cogitation was that he took no time for washing the dishes after breakfast, but went to work at once to make a doll.  The initial step was to take the hide from the rabbit.  Sadly but unresistingly the little pilgrim resigned his pet, and never expected again to possess the comfort of its fur against his face.

With the skin presently rolled up in a nice light form, however, the miner was back in the cabin, looking for something of which to fashion a body and head for the lady-to-be.  There seemed to be nothing handy, till he thought of a peeled potato for the lady’s head and a big metal powder-flask to supply the body.

Unfortunately, as potatoes were costly, the only tuber they had in the house was a weazened old thing that parted with its wrinkled skin reluctantly and was not very white when partially peeled.  However, Jim pared off enough of its surface on which to make a countenance, and left the darker hide above to form the dolly’s hair.  He bored two eyes, a nose, and a mouth in the toughened substance, and blackened them vividly with soot from the chimney.  After this he bored a larger hole, beneath the chin, and pushed the head thus created upon the metal spout of the flask, where it certainly stuck with firmness.

With a bit of cord the skin of the rabbit was now secured about the neck and body of the lady’s form, and her beauty was complete.  That certain particles of powder rattled lightly about in her graceful interior only served to render her manners more animated and her person more like good, lively company, for Jim so decided himself.

“There you are.  That’s the prettiest dolly you ever saw anywhere,” said he, as he handed it over to the willing little chap.  “And she all belongs to you.”