he
roadway, hitched to every available post, rail and tree in the
vicinity. The side streets were blocked in similar fashion.

The hall inside was a blaze of coloured lights and was bedecked with
flags and streamers. The orchestral part of the town band was doing
its best. Everybody, his wife and his sweetheart, were conspicuously
present, despite the fact that it was the height of the harvest season
and most of them had been hard at work in the orchards since early
morning, garnering their apple crops, and would have to be hard at it
again next day, as if nothing had happened between times to disturb
their evening's recuperations.

A number of dances had been gone through, evidently, for the younger
ladies were seated round the hall, fanning themselves daintily, while
the complexions of the more elderly of them had already begun to
betray a perspiry floridness.

The men, young and old alike, mopping their moist foreheads with their
handkerchiefs and straining at their collars in partial suffocation,
crowded the corridors in quest of cooler air and an opportunity for a
pipe or a cigarette. Only a few of the younger gallants lingered in
the dance room to exchange pleasantries and bask for several precious
extra moments in the alluring presence of some particular young lady
with whom, for the time being, they were especially enamoured.

A cheery atmosphere prevailed; both political parties had buried their
differences for the night. All were out for a good time and to do
honour to the Valley's new parliamentary representative.

The men who congregated in the corridors presented a strange contrast;
great broad fellows, polite of manner and speaking cultured English,
in full evening dress but of a cut of the decade previous; others in
their best blue serges; still others in breeches and leggings or
puttees; while a few--not of the ballroom variety--refused to dislodge
themselves from their sheepskin chaps, and jingled their spurs every
time they changed position.

For the most part, the eyes of these men were clear and bright, and
their faces were tanned to a healthy brown from long exposure to the
Okanagan's perpetual sunshine. The pale-faced exceptions were the
storekeepers, clerks, hotel-men and the bunco-dealers, like
Rattlesnake Jim Dalton, who spent their days in the saloons and their
nights at the card-tables.

The ladies, seated round the hall, compared favourably with their
partners in point of healthy and