grips,
And the bright world fades away:
Pray for the good unguessed of us,
Pray for the peace and rest of us.
Here comes the Shape in quest of us,
Now must we go away--

You and I in the grave's eclipse,
Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips."

Just as he finished there came a knock at the door, and a young man
entered. He had the broad smiling face of a comedian, and the bulgy
forehead of a Baptist Missionary. The Pote introduced him to me.

"The Yukon Yorick."

"Hello," chuckled the newcomer, "how's the bunch? Don't let me stampede
you. How d'ye do, Horace! Glad to meet you." (He called everybody
Horace.) "Just come away from a meeting of my creditors. What's that?
Have a slab of booze? Hardly that, old fellow, hardly that. Don't tempt
me, Horace, don't tempt me. Remember I'm only a poor working-girl."

He seemed brimming over with jovial acceptance of life in all its
phases. He lit a cigar.

"Say, boys, you know old Dingbats the lawyer. Ha, yes. Well, met him on
Front Street just now. Says I: 'Horace, that was a pretty nifty spiel
you gave us last night at the Zero Club.' He looked at me all tickled up
the spine. Ha, yes. He was pleased as Punch. 'Say, Horace,' I says, 'I'm
on, but I won't give you away. I've got a book in my room with every
word of that speech in it.' He looked flabbergasted. So I have--ha, yes,
the dictionary."

He rolled his cigar unctuously in his mouth, with many chuckles and a
histrionic eye.

"No, don't tempt me, Horace. Remember, I'm only a poor working-girl.
Thanks, I'll just sit down on this soap-box. Knew a man once, Jobcroft
was his name, Charles Alfred Jobcroft, sat down on a custard pie at a
pink tea; was so embarrassed he wouldn't get up. Just sat on till every
one else was gone. Every one was wondering why he wouldn't budge: just
sat tight."

"I guess he _cussed hard_," ventured the Prodigal.

"Oh, Horace, spare me that! Remember I'm only a poor working-girl.
Hardly that, old fellow. Say, hit me with a slab of booze quick. Make
things sparkle, boys, make things sparkle."

He drank urbanely of the diluted alcohol that passed for whisky.

"Hit me easy, boys, hit me easy," he said, as they refilled his glass.
"I can't hold my hootch so well as I could a few summers ago--and many
hard Falls. Talking about holding your 'hooch,' the best I ever saw was
a man called Podstreak, Arthur Frederick Podstreak. You couldn't get
that man going. The way he