all stock. He saw his blunder when O'Flynn, possessing himself of the
demijohn, roared out:

"It's my whisky, I tell you! I bought it and paid furr it, and but for
me it would be at the bottom o' the Yukon now."

"Yes, and you'd be at the bottom of the Yukon yourself if you hadn't
been dragged out by the scruff o' your neck. And you'd be in a pretty
fix now, if we left you alone with your whisky, which is about all
you've got."

"We agreed," Potts chipped in, "that it should be kept for medicinal
purposes only."

Sullenly O'Flynn sipped at his grog. Potts had "hogged most of the
hootch."

* * * * *

"Look here, Boy," said Mac at supper, "I said I wouldn't eat off this
plate again."

"Oh, dry up! One tin plate's like another tin plate."

"Are you reflecting on the washer-up, Mr. MacCann?" asked Potts.

"I'm saying what I've said before--that I've scratched my name on my
plate, and I won't eat off this rusty, battered kettle-lid."

He held it up as if to shy it at the Boy. The young fellow turned with
a flash in his eye and stood taut. Then in the pause he said quite low:

"Let her fly, MacCann."

But MacCann thought better of it. He threw the plate down on the table
with a clatter. The Colonel jumped up and bent over the mush-pot at the
fire, beside the Boy, whispering to him.

"Oh, all right."

When the Boy turned back to the table, with the smoking kettle, the
cloud had gone from his face. MacCann had got up to hang a blanket over
the door. While his back was turned the Boy brought a tin plate, still
in good condition, set it down at Mac's place, planted a nail on end in
the middle, and with three blows from a hammer fastened the plate
firmly to the board.

"Maybe you can't hand it up for more as often as you like, but you'll
always find it there," he said when McCann came back. And the laugh
went against the dainty pioneer, who to the end of the chapter ate from
a plate nailed fast to the table.

"I begin to understand," says the Colonel to the Boy, under cover of
the others' talk, "why it's said to be such a devil of a test of a
fellow's decency to winter in this infernal country."

"They say it's always a man's pardner he comes to hate most," returned
the Boy, laughing good-humouredly at the Colonel.

"Naturally. Look at the row in the Little Cabin."

"That hasn't been the only row," the Boy went on more thoughtfully. "I
say, Colonel"--he lowered his voice--"do