nd he said: 'If you please, not that song.'

"I suspect I acted like an idiot. I stammered out apologies, went down
on my litanies, figuratively speaking, and was all the same confident
that my excuses were making bad infernally worse. But somehow the old
chap had taken a liking to me.--No, of course you couldn't understand
that. Not that he was so old, you know; but he had the way of retired
royalty about him, as if he had lived life up to the hilt, and was all
pulse and granite. Then he began to talk in his quiet way about hunting
and fishing; about stalking in the Highlands and tiger-hunting in India;
and wound up with some wonderful stuff about moose-hunting, the sport of
Canada. This made me itch like sin, just to get my fingers on a trigger,
with a full moose-yard in view. I can feel it now--the bound in the
blood as I caught at Malbrouck's arm and said: 'By George, I must kill
moose; that's sport for Vikings, and I was meant to be a Viking--or
a gladiator.' Malbrouck at once replied that he would give me some
moose-hunting in December if I would come up to Marigold Lake. I
couldn't exactly reply on the instant, because, you see, there wasn't
much chance for board and lodging thereabouts, unless--but he went on
to say that I should make his house my 'public,'perhaps he didn't say
it quite in those terms, that he and his wife would be glad to have me.
With a couple of Indians we could go north-west, where the moose-yards
were, and have some sport both exciting and prodigious. Well, I'm a
muff, I know, but I didn't refuse that. Besides, I began to see the safe
side of the bet I had made with my aunt, the dowager, and I was more
than pleased with what had come to pass so far. Lucky for you, too, you
yarn-spinner, that the thing did develop so, or you wouldn't be getting
fame and shekels out of the results of my story.

"Well, I got one thing out of the night's experience; and it was that
the Malbroucks were no plebs., that they had had their day where plates
are blue and gold and the spoons are solid coin. But what had sent them
up here among the moose, the Indians, and the conies--whatever THEY are?
How should I get at it? Insolence, you say? Yes, that. I should come
up here in December, and I should mulct my aunt in the price of a new
breech-loader. But I found out nothing the next morning, and I left with
a paternal benediction from Malbrouck, and a smile from his wife that
sent my blood tingling as it hadn't ting