"Put me down for a barrel, O joyful stranger," FitzHerbert exclaimed eagerly.
Carney's gray eyes had widened a little at the stranger's statement.
"You can apply to Superintendent Kane," the little man answered; "he will have the handling of it, I fancy—a carload."
FitzHerbert's blue eyes searched Carney's, but the latter sat as if playing poker.
"Tell us about it, man," Enders suggested.
"I pulled into Fort Calbert this morning," the other contributed, "and a jocular constable took me to the Fort as a vagrant."
"Your equipage was against you," Enders advised. "Don't think anything of that," FitzHerbert said; "the hobos have been running neck-and-neck with the gophers about here; they burned up five freight cars in two weeks. The police have been shaken up over it by the O.C."
The little man drew from a pocket of his coat a bag of gold, and clapped it gently on the table.
"You had your credentials," and FitzHerbert nodded.
"I'd been washing gold down on the bars at Victoria. It was this way. I have a farm there, and last year I put in thirty acres of oats. It was a rotten crop and I didn't cut it. This year it came up a volunteer crop—a splendid one; I sold it to Major Grisbold, at Fort Saskatchewan, standing. Now I'm on my holidays, just a little pleasure jaunt."