Uncle Jim drew a huge log from beside the hearth and sat on the driest end of it, while their guest occupied the stool.  The young man, without turning away from his discontented, peevish brooding over the fire, vaguely reached backward for the whiskey-bottle and Uncle Billy’s tin cup, to which he was assisted by the latter’s hospitable hand.  But on setting down the cup his eye caught sight of the pill-box.

“Wot’s that?” he said, with gloomy scorn.  “Rat poison?”

“Quinine pills—­agin ager,” said Uncle Jim.  “The newest thing out.  Keeps out damp like Injin-rubber!  Take one to follow yer whiskey.  Me and Uncle Billy wouldn’t think o’ settin’ down, quiet like, in the evening arter work, without ’em.  Take one—­ye ‘r’ welcome!  We keep ’em out here for the boys.”

Accustomed as the partners were to adopt and wear each other’s opinions before folks, as they did each other’s clothing, Uncle Billy was, nevertheless, astonished and delighted at Uncle Jim’s enthusiasm over his pills.  The guest took one and swallowed it.

“Mighty bitter!” he said, glancing at his hosts with the quick Californian suspicion of some practical joke.  But the honest faces of the partners reassured him.

“That bitterness ye taste,” said Uncle Jim quickly, “is whar the thing’s gittin’ in its work.  Sorter sickenin’ the malaria—­and kinder water-proofin’ the insides all to onct and at the same lick!  Don’t yer see?  Put another in yer vest pocket; you’ll be cryin’ for ’em like a child afore ye get home.  Thar!  Well, how’s things agoin’ on your claim, Dick?  Boomin’, eh?”

The guest raised his head and turned it sufficiently to fling his answer back over his shoulder at his hosts.  “I don’t know what you’d call’ boomin’,’” he said gloomily; “I suppose you two men sitting here comfortably by the fire, without caring whether school keeps or not, would call two feet of backwater over one’s claim ‘boomin’;’ I reckon you’d consider a hundred and fifty feet of sluicing carried away, and drifting to thunder down the South Fork, something in the way of advertising to your old camp!  I suppose YOU’d think it was an inducement to investors!  I shouldn’t wonder,” he added still more gloomily, as a sudden dash of rain down the wide-throated chimney dropped in his tin cup—­“and it would be just like you two chaps, sittin’ there gormandizing over your quinine—­if yer said this rain that’s lasted three weeks was something to be proud of!”

It was the cheerful and the satisfying custom of the rest of the camp, for no reason whatever, to hold Uncle Jim and Uncle Billy responsible for its present location, its vicissitudes, the weather, or any convulsion of nature; and it was equally the partners’ habit, for no reason whatever, to accept these animadversions and apologize.

“It’s a rain that’s soft and mellowin’,” said Uncle Billy gently, “and supplin’ to the sinews and muscles.  Did ye ever notice, Jim”—­ostentatiously to his partner—­“did ye ever notice that you get inter a kind o’ sweaty lather workin’ in it?  Sorter openin’ to the pores!”