"I'll bet five dollars it won't make yer any happier."
"Begob, I'm happy enough! Gentlemen, wud ye like I should sing ye a song?"
"Yes."
"Yes," and the Colonel thumped the table for order, infinitely relieved that the dinner was done, and the punch not likely to turn into a casus belli. O'Flynn began a ditty about the Widdy Malone that woke up Kaviak and made him rub his round eyes with astonishment. He sat up, and hung on to the back of Mac's coat to make sure he had some anchorage in the strange new waters he had so suddenly been called on to navigate.
The song ended, the Colonel, as toast-master, proposed the health of—he was going to say Father Wills, but felt it discreeter to name no names. Standing up in the middle of the cabin, where he didn't have to stoop, he lifted his cup till it knocked against the swing-shelf, and called out, "Here's to Our Visitors, Neighbours, and Friends!" Whereupon he made a stately circular bow, which ended by his offering Kaviak his hand, in the manner of one who executes a figure in an old-fashioned dance. The smallest of "Our Visitors," still keeping hold of Mac, presented the Colonel with the disengaged half-yard of flannel undershirt on the other side, and the speech went on, very flowery, very hospitable, very Kentuckian.
When the Colonel sat down there was much applause, and O'Flynn, who had lent his cup to Nicholas, and didn't feel he could wait till it came back, began to drink punch out of the dipper between shouts of:
"Hooray! Brayvo! Here's to the Kurrnul! God bless him! That's rale oratry, Kurrnul! Here's to Kentucky—and ould Ireland."
Father Wills stood up, smiling, to reply.
"Friends" (the Boy thought the keen eyes rested a fraction of a moment longer on Mac than on the rest),—"I think in some ways this is the pleasantest House-Warming I ever went to. I won't take up time thanking the Colonel for the friendly sentiments he's expressed, though I return them heartily. I must use these moments you are good enough to give me in telling you something of what I feel is implied in the founding of this camp of yours.
"Gentlemen, the few white dwellers in the Yukon country have not looked forward" (his eyes twinkled almost wickedly) "with that pleasure you might expect in exiles, to the influx of people brought up here by the great Gold Discovery. We knew what that sort of craze leads to. We knew that in a barren land like this, more and more denuded of wild game every year, more and more the prey of epidemic disease—we knew that into this sorely tried and hungry world would come a horde of men, all of them ignorant of the conditions up here, most of them ill-provided with proper food and clothing, many of them (I can say it without offence in this company)—many of them men whom the older, richer communities were glad to get rid of. Gentlemen, I have ventured to take you into our confidence so far, because I want to take you still farther—to tell you a little of the intense satisfaction with which we recognise that good fortune has sent us in you just the sort of neighbours we had not dared to hope for. It means more to us than you realise. When I heard a few weeks ago that, in addition to the boat-loads that had already got some distance up the river beyond Holy Cross—"