Dunkirk had a basket of wine brought down from his room and he made the sheriff sit beside him at the table. "We may as well make the most of our last evening together," he said, glancing jovially around. "We shall have to walk down the mountain in the morning, I suppose," remarked Bartley Hubbard. "That's jest w'at's the matter," observed the sheriff. "But the ladies, my dear sir, the ladies----" began Punner. "The weeming, they'll hev kinveyances, young man, so ye kin jest shet up ef ye please," the officer interrupted, with a good-natured wink and a knowing wag of his head. A disinterested observer would have noted readily enough that the feast was far from a banquet. There was Ferris, for instance, munching a biscuit and sipping his wine and pretending to enjoy Punner's sallies and Cattleton's drolleries, while down in his heart lay the leaden thought, the hideous knowledge of an empty pocket. Indeed the reflection was a common one, weighting down almost every breast at the board. One little incident did make even Ferris forget himself for a moment or two, it was when deaf Miss Nebeker misinterpreted some remark made by Hubbard and arose with a view to reciting _The Jerseyman's Jewsharp_, with a new variation, "Oh, Jerseyman Joe had a Jewsharp of gold," she began, in her most melodious drawl. She could not hear the protesting voices of her friends and she misinterpreted the stare of the sheriff. "For the good heaven's sake, Hubbard," cried Lucas, "do use your influence; quick, please, or I shall collapse." Bartley Hubbard took hold of her dress and gently pulled her down into her chair. "The sheriff objects!" he yelled in her ear. "After dinner?" she resignedly inquired, "well, then after dinner, in the parlor." When the feast had come to the crumbs, Dunkirk arose and said: "We all have had a good time at the Hotel Helicon, but our sojourn upon the heights of Mt. Boab has been cut short by a certain chain of mishaps over which we have had no control, and to-morrow we go away, doubtless forever. I feel like saying that I harbor no unpleasant recollections of the days we have spent together." Cattleton sprung to his feet to move a vote of thanks "to the public-spirited and benevolent man who built this magnificent hotel and threw open its doors to us." It was carried. "Now then," said Lucas, adjusting his glasses and speaking in his gravest chest-tones, "I move that it be taken as the sense of this assembly, that it is our duty to draw upon our publisher for money enough to take us home." The response was overwhelming. Dunkirk felt the true state of affairs. He arose, his broad face wreathed with genial smiles, and said: "To the certain knowledge of your unhappy publisher your accounts are already overdrawn, but in view of the rich material you have been gathering of late, your publisher will honor you draughts to the limit of your expenses home."