table, on which stood a demijohn and three or four dirty glasses. Two
roughly dressed men, whose long, matted beards and hair left only their
eyes and lips visible in the tangled hirsute wilderness below their
slouched hats, were leaning against the opposite sides of the doorway,
smoking. Almost thrown against them in the rapid momentum of his
descent, Clarence halted violently.

"Well, sonny, you needn't capsize the shanty," said the first man,
without taking his pipe from his lips.

"If yer looking fur yer ma, she and yer Aunt Jane hev jest gone over to
Parson Doolittle's to take tea," observed the second man lazily. "She
allowed that you'd wait."

"I'm--I'm--going to--to the mines," explained Clarence, with some
hesitation. "I suppose this is the way."

The two men took their pipes from their lips, looked at each other,
completely wiped every vestige of expression from their faces with the
back of their hands, turned their eyes into the interior of the cabin,
and said, "Will yer come yer, now WILL yer?" Thus adjured, half a dozen
men, also bearded and carrying pipes in their mouths, straggled out of
the shanty, and, filing in front of it, squatted down, with their backs
against the boards, and gazed comfortably at the boy. Clarence began to
feel uneasy.

"I'll give," said one, taking out his pipe and grimly eying Clarence, "a
hundred dollars for him as he stands."

"And seein' as he's got that bran-new rig-out o' tools," said another,