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"What things are these?" said Mary, struck with the weird-looking creatures that sprawled around the room in their roughly-made glass cases. But she was not prepared for the technical names, which Job Legh pattered down on her ear, on which they fell like hail on a skylight; and the strange language only bewildered her more than ever. Margaret saw the state of the case, and came to the rescue.
At the first glance it seemed as if the wheelwright was amusing himself by making a round bonfire of scraps, whose blue reek rose in the country air, and was driven every now and then by the wind over the boys, who coughed and sneezed and grumbled, but did not attempt to move, for there was, to them, an interesting feat about to be performed by the wheelwright to wit, the fitting of the red-hot roughly-made iron tire in the wood fire upon the still more roughly-made wheel, which had been fitted with a few new spokes and a fresh felloe, while Farmer Tallington's heavy tumbril-cart stood close by, like a cripple supported on a crutch, waiting for its iron-shod circular limb.
I examined the roughly-made false key without comment but with a significant glance at them which I think they understood; and I overhauled a couple of large carpet bags, neither of which contained anything but the outfit of appliances for the raid. "'I don't see what good that would do, sir, said Susan. 'The men is gone and nothing hasn't been took.
Cleek took the first step carefully, and very slowly descended into the darkness, with Dollops close behind him. Down and down they went, and on reaching the bottom, found the place opened out into a sort of roughly-made tunnel, just as high as a man's head, which ran on straight into the darkness in front of them.
Entering the Square of the enclosure he looked nonchalantly about him. Two men, half-breeds, were sitting on a roughly-made bench outside the store, smoking and talking. Inside the store a tall Indian was bartering with a white man, whom he easily guessed to be the factor, and as he looked round from the open door of the factor's house, emerged a white woman whom he divined was the factor's wife.
A wagon was coming down the street, and it appeared to Amos as if his uncle must have seen the team approaching and hurried out of the building to speak with the driver, for he made his way around the throng, as he beckoned vigourously to the newcomer. The vehicle was a roughly-made cart for hauling country produce, drawn by two horses, and partially loaded with potatoes and corn.
He was a curious, furtive-looking man, with quick, small eyes, a smooth brown face, and crisp, grizzly hair, surmounted by a roughly-made cap of fox-skin.
For he was in a rutty, little-used track, in a roughly-made, springless cart, drawn by a big, ragged, powerful jackass, which every time the cart stuck, and his driver used the light ash stick he carried, laid down his ears, bared his teeth, and kicked at the front of the cart, which was rough with indentations and splinters, the result of the prowess of the donkey's heels.
This house was a small wayside inn, situated where a miners' trail crossed the emigrant route; a roughly-made, two-story, frame building, with a corral adjoining; at which mule pack-trains stopped overnight, when carrying supplies from Sacramento and Marysville for miners working the gold placer diggings along the American and Yuba rivers.
The weather outside was hot and sultry, and the more people assembled, the heavier and more oppressive became the air within the spacious tent, the interior of which looked plain enough, for its whole furniture consisted of some small roughly-made tables, some benches and chairs, and one large table, and a superb ebony chest with ivory ornaments, evidently stolen property.
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