respectable
ball, and most of the League men determined to show their appreciation
of the concession of the committee to the principles of the League in
the important matter of refreshments by attending in force.

Nixon would not go. However jauntily he might talk, he could not trust
himself, as he said, where whisky was flowing, for it got into his nose
'like a fish-hook into a salmon.' He was from Nova Scotia. For like
reason, Vernon Winton, the young Oxford fellow, would not go. When they
chaffed, his lips grew a little thinner, and the colour deepened in
his handsome face, but he went on his way. Geordie despised the 'hale
hypothick' as a 'daft ploy,' and the spending of five dollars upon a
ticket he considered a 'sinfu' waste o' guid siller'; and he warned
Billy against 'coontenancin' ony sic redeeklus nonsense.'

But no one expected Billy to go; although the last two months he had
done wonders for his personal appearance, and for his position in the
social scale as well. They all knew what a fight he was making, and
esteemed him accordingly. How well I remember the pleased pride in his
face when he told me in the afternoon of the committee's urgent request
that he should join the orchestra with his 'cello! It was not
simply that his 'cello was his joy and pride, but he felt it to be a
recognition of his return to respectability.

I have often wondered how things combine at times to a man's
destruction.

Had Mr. Craig not been away at the Landing that week, had Geordie not
been on the night-shift, had Mrs. Mavor not been so occupied with the
care of her sick child, it may be Billy might have been saved his fall.

The anticipation of the ball stirred Black Rock and the camps with a
thrill of expectant delight. Nowadays, when I find myself forced to
leave my quiet smoke in my studio after dinner at the call of some
social engagement which I have failed to elude, I groan at my hard lot,
and I wonder as I look back and remember the pleasurable anticipation
with which I viewed the approaching ball. But I do not wonder now any
more than I did then at the eager delight of the men who for seven days
in the week swung their picks up in the dark breasts of the mines, or
who chopped and sawed among the solitary silences of the great forests.
Any break in the long and weary monotony was welcome; what mattered
the cost or consequence! To the rudest and least cultured of them the
sameness of the life must have been hard to