ut, "Here's to Our Visitors, Neighbours, and Friends!"
Whereupon he made a stately circular bow, which ended by his offering
Kaviak his hand, in the manner of one who executes a figure in an
old-fashioned dance. The smallest of "Our Visitors," still keeping hold
of Mac, presented the Colonel with the disengaged half-yard of flannel
undershirt on the other side, and the speech went on, very flowery,
very hospitable, very Kentuckian.

When the Colonel sat down there was much applause, and O'Flynn, who had
lent his cup to Nicholas, and didn't feel he could wait till it came
back, began to drink punch out of the dipper between shouts of:

"Hooray! Brayvo! Here's to the Kurrnul! God bless him! That's rale
oratry, Kurrnul! Here's to Kentucky--and ould Ireland."

Father Wills stood up, smiling, to reply.

_"Friends"_ (the Boy thought the keen eyes rested a fraction of a
moment longer on Mac than on the rest),--_"I think in some ways this is
the pleasantest House-Warming I ever went to. I won't take up time
thanking the Colonel for the friendly sentiments he's expressed, though
I return them heartily. I must use these moments you are good enough to
give me in telling you something of what I feel is implied in the
founding of this camp of yours.

"Gentlemen, the few white dwellers in the Yukon country have not looked
forward"_ (his eyes twinkled almost wickedly) _"with that pleasure you
might expect in exiles, to the influx of people brought up here by the
great Gold Discovery. We knew what that sort of craze leads to. We knew
that in a barren land like this, more and more denuded of wild game
every year, more and more the prey of epidemic disease--we knew that
into this sorely tried and hungry world would come a horde of men, all
of them ignorant of the conditions up here, most of them ill-provided
with proper food and clothing, many of them (I can say it without
offence in this company)--many of them men whom the older, richer
communities were glad to get rid of. Gentlemen, I have ventured to take
you into our confidence so far, because I want to take you still
farther--to tell you a little of the intense satisfaction with which we
recognise that good fortune has sent us in you just the sort of
neighbours we had not dared to hope for. It means more to us than you
realise. When I heard a few weeks ago that, in addition to the
boat-loads that had already got some distance up the river beyond Holy
Cross--"_

"Going to Daws