ne black and glossy in
the brilliant moonlight. When they got up to them the men were puzzled,
each was so like its neighbour, and Stephen declared he had forgotten
the number, though Bill had given it to him.

"Well, try any one," said Talbot, impatiently, as Stephen stopped
bewildered. They were standing on the side-walk, now a slippery arch of
ice, between two rows of the low black cabins. There was no light in any
of them; it was two o'clock; the moon alone shone up and down the
street. Talbot felt his moustache freezing to his face, and his left eye
being rapidly closed by the lashes freezing together, and that's enough
to make a man impatient. Stephen did not move, and Talbot went up
himself to the nearest cabin and knocked at the door. They waited a long
time, but at last a hand fumbled with the catch inside, and the door was
opened a little way; through the crack came out a stream of warm air,
the fumes of tobacco and wood smoke; within was darkness.

"Is this Bill Winters'?" Talbot asked, and the door opened wider.

"I guess it is," said a voice in reply. "Why, it's Mr. Talbot and Mr.
Wood--come in, sirs."

Talbot and Wood stepped over the threshold into the thick darkness, and
the door closed behind them. There was a shuffling sound for an instant
as Mr. Winters groped for a light, then he struck a match and lighted up
a little tin lamp on the wall. The light revealed a good-sized cabin
with a large stove in the centre, round which, with their feet towards
it, four or five men rolled up in skins or blankets were lying asleep.

"You want a bed for the night, I expect," Winters went on; "we've all
turned in already, but I guess there's room for two more."

Wood and Talbot both expressed their sense of contrition at disturbing
him, but Winters would not listen.

"Oh, stow all that," he said, as he set about dragging forward two
trestles and covering them with blankets. "You two fellows are so damned
polite, you don't seem suited to this town, you don't seem natural here,
that's a fact."

He was stepping over and about amongst the prostrate forms, and
sometimes on them, but none of them roused themselves sufficiently to do
more than utter a sleepy ejaculation and turn into a fresh position.
Wood and Talbot stood waiting close against the door. It was
half-an-hour before Bill had prepared their beds just as he wanted them,
extinguished the lamp again, and retreated to his own corner. Then
darkness and stil