Yet the strangest part of the whole matter was perhaps this, that Irvine was as beautiful as a statue.  His features were, in themselves, perfect; it was only his cloudy, uncouth, and coarse expression that disfigured them.  So much strength residing in so spare a frame was proof sufficient of the accuracy of his shape.  He must have been built somewhat after the pattern of Jack Sheppard; but the famous housebreaker, we may be certain, was no lout.  It was by the extraordinary powers of his mind no less than by the vigour of his body, that he broke his strong prison with such imperfect implements, turning the very obstacles to service.  Irvine, in the same case, would have sat down and spat, and grumbled curses.  He had the soul of a fat sheep, but, regarded as an artist’s model, the exterior of a Greek God.  It was a cruel thought to persons less favoured in their birth, that this creature, endowed—­to use the language of theatres—­with extraordinary “means,” should so manage to misemploy them that he looked ugly and almost deformed.  It was only by an effort of abstraction, and after many days, that you discovered what he was.

By playing on the oaf’s conceit, and standing closely over him, we got a path made round the corner of the dump to our door, so that we could come and go with decent ease; and he even enjoyed the work, for in that there were boulders to be plucked up bodily, bushes to be uprooted, and other occasions for athletic display:  but cutting wood was a different matter.  Anybody could cut wood; and, besides, my wife was tired of supervising him, and had other things to attend to.  And, in short, days went by, and Irvine came daily, and talked and lounged and spat; but the firewood remained intact as sleepers on the platform or growing trees upon the mountainside.  Irvine, as a woodcutter, we could tolerate; but Irvine as a friend of the family, at so much a day, was too bald an imposition, and at length, on the afternoon of the fourth or fifth day of our connection, I explained to him, as clearly as I could, the light in which I had grown to regard his presence.  I pointed out to him that I could not continue to give him a salary for spitting on the floor; and this expression, which came after a good many others, at last penetrated his obdurate wits.  He rose at once, and said if that was the way he was going to be spoke to, he reckoned he would quit.  And, no one interposing, he departed.

So far, so good.  But we had no firewood.  The next afternoon, I strolled down to Rufe’s and consulted him on the subject.  It was a very droll interview, in the large, bare north room of the Silverado Hotel, Mrs. Hanson’s patchwork on a frame, and Rufe, and his wife, and I, and the oaf himself, all more or less embarrassed.  Rufe announced there was nobody in the neighbourhood but Irvine who could do a day’s work for anybody.  Irvine, thereupon, refused to have any more to do with my service; he “wouldn’t work no more for