ame. I could only throw my arm over his shoulder
and stand silent beside him. A sudden jingle of bells roused him, and,
giving himself a little shake, he exclaimed, 'There are the boys coming
home.'

Soon the camp was filled with men talking, laughing, chaffing, like
light-hearted boys.

'They are a little wild to-night,' said Graeme; 'and to morrow they'll
paint Black Rock red.'

Before many minutes had gone, the last teamster was 'washed up,' and
all were standing about waiting impatiently for the cook's signal--the
supper to-night was to be 'something of a feed'--when the sound of
bells drew their attention to a light sleigh drawn by a buckskin broncho
coming down the hillside at a great pace.

'The preacher, I'll bet, by his driving,' said one of the men.

'Bedad, and it's him has the foine nose for turkey!' said Blaney, a
good-natured, jovial Irishman.

'Yes, or for pay-day, more like,' said Keefe, a black-browed, villainous
fellow-countryman of Blaney's, and, strange to say, his great friend.

Big Sandy M'Naughton, a Canadian Highlander from Glengarry, rose up in
wrath. 'Bill Keefe,' said he, with deliberate emphasis, 'you'll just
keep your dirty tongue off the minister; and as for your pay, it's
little he sees of it, or any one else, except Mike Slavin, when you're
too dry to wait for some one to treat you, or perhaps Father Ryan, when
the fear of hell-fire is on to you.'

The men stood amazed at Sandy's sudden anger and length of speech.

'Bon; dat's good for you, my bully boy,' said Baptiste, a wiry little
French-Canadian, Sandy's sworn ally and devoted admirer ever since the
day when the big Scotsman, under great provocation, had knocked him
clean off the dump into the river and then jumped in for him.

It was not till afterwards I learned the cause of Sandy's sudden wrath
which urged him to such unwonted length of speech. It was not simply
that the Presbyterian blood carried with it reverence for the
minister and contempt for Papists and Fenians, but that he had a vivid
remembrance of how, only a month ago, the minister had got him out of
Mike Slavin's saloon and out the clutches of Keefe and Slavin and their
gang of bloodsuckers.

Keefe started up with a curse. Baptiste sprang to Sandy's side, slapped
him on the back, and called out, 'You keel him, I'll hit (eat) him up,
me.'

It looked as if there might be a fight, when a harsh voice said in a
low, savage tone, 'Stop your row, you blank fools