ant chair.

"Jest heard the best thing out, boys! Ye know Smiley, over yar,--Jim
Smiley,--funniest man in the Bar? Well, Jim was jest telling the richest
yarn about--"

"Smiley's a ---- fool," interrupted a gloomy voice.

"A particular ---- skunk," added another in sepulchral accents.

A silence followed these positive statements. The Old Man glanced
quickly around the group. Then his face slowly changed. "That's so,"
he said reflectively, after a pause, "certingly a sort of a skunk and
suthin of a fool. In course." He was silent for a moment as in painful
contemplation of the unsavoriness and folly of the unpopular Smiley.
"Dismal weather, ain't it?" he added, now fully embarked on the current
of prevailing sentiment. "Mighty rough papers on the boys, and no show
for money this season. And tomorrow's Christmas."

There was a movement among the men at this announcement, but whether of
satisfaction or disgust was not plain. "Yes," continued the Old Man in
the lugubrious tone he had, within the last few moments, unconsciously
adopted,--"yes, Christmas, and to-night's Christmas eve. Ye see, boys,
I kinder thought--that is, I sorter had an idee, jest passin' like, you
know--that may be ye'd all like to come over to my house to-night and
have a sort of tear round. But I suppose, now, you wouldn't? Don't feel
like it, may be?" he added with anxious sympathy, peering into the faces
of his companions.

"Well, I don't know," responded Tom Flynn with some cheerfulness.
"P'r'aps we may. But how about your wife, Old Man? What does SHE say to
it?"

The Old Man hesitated. His conjugal experience had not been a happy one,
and the fact was known to Simpson's Bar. His first wife, a delicate,
pretty little woman, had suffered keenly and secretly from the jealous
suspicions of her husband, until one day he invited the whole Bar to his
house to expose her infidelity. On arriving, the party found the shy,
petite creature quietly engaged in her household duties, and retired
abashed and discomfited. But the sensitive woman did not easily recover
from the shock of this extraordinary outrage. It was with difficulty
she regained her equanimity sufficiently to release her lover from the
closet in which he was concealed and escape with him. She left a boy of
three years to comfort her bereaved husband. The Old Man's present wife
had been his cook. She was large, loyal, and aggressive.

Before he could reply, Joe Dimmick suggested with gre