"And ye can have the loan o' the whip-saw to make more, whenever the fancy takes ye."

"Loan o' the whip-saw! Why, it's mine," says the Colonel.

"Divil a bit of it, man!" says O'Flynn serenely. "Everything we've got belongs to all of us, except a sack o' coffee, a medicine-chest, and a dimmi-john. And it's mesilf that's afraid the dimmi-john—"

"What's the use of my having bought a whip-saw?" interrupted the Colonel, hurriedly. "What's the good of it, if the only man that knows how to use it—"

"Is more taken up wid bein' a guardjin angel to his pardner's dimmi-john—"

The Colonel turned and frowned at the proprietor of the dimmi-john. The Boy had dropped behind to look at some marten tracks in the fresh-fallen snow.

"I'll follow that trail after dinner," says he, catching up the others in time to hear O'Flynn say:

"If it wusn't that ye think only a feller that's been to Caribou can teach ye annything it's Jimmie O'Flynn that 'ud show ye how to play a chune on that same whip-saw."

"Will you show us after dinner?"

"Sure I will."