"Mighty fine!" The Boy examined them by the strange glow that brightened in the sky.
"You keep."
"Oh no, can't do that."
"Yes!" Nicholas spoke peremptorily. "Yukon men have big feast, must bring present. Me no got reindeer, me got button." He grinned. "Goo'-bye." And the last of the guests went his way.
It was only habit that kept the Colonel toasting by the fire before he turned in, for the cabin was as warm to-night as the South in mid-summer.
"Grasshoppah sett'n on a swee' p'tater vine,"
The Boy droned sleepily as he untied the leathern thongs that kept up his muckluck legs—
"Swee' p'tater vine, swee' p'ta—"
"All those othahs"—the Colonel waved a hand in the direction of Pymeut—"I think we dreamed 'em, Boy. You and me playing the Big Game with Fohtune. Foolishness! Klondyke? Yoh crazy. Tell me the river's hard as iron and the snow's up to the windah? Don' b'lieve a wo'd of it. We're on some plantation, Boy, down South, in the niggah quawtaws."