“Just like that,” repeated old Whipple, when he got his breath. “As easy as fallin’ off a lawg. Whole country was covered with gold. All you had to do was find a piece of it without stakes on--and that was easy, in spite o’ fifty thousand stampeders. What did they amount to in a hunnerd and fifty thousand million acres o’ wilderness, hey? Say, this Willie was one of the guys that used to sing, ‘The Klondike Vale Tonight.’ Must ’a’ heered it on a boat comin’ up to Skag-a-way. Had a string thing like a banjo or somethin’. Fine voice Willie had, too. An’ he’d bawl her out in the evenin’ from his skiff moored to the bank. When the rag chewers was through sawin’ their stoves in two, and gittin’ ready to sleep to git new strength for quarrelin’ afresh in the mornin’, Willie would sing it mournful--fer he sure believed the words: “In fur-away Alaska, whare the Yukon River flows, An’ the mighty boulders stand ’mid wealth and might, In a land o’ wealth untold, in a grave that’s decked with g-o-l-d, He’s sleepin’ _i-n_ th’ Klondike Vale to-night!” Flushed, his faded, blue eyes shining in the deep sockets, old Whipple’s laughter sounded again, like mirthless echoes in an empty cavern. “‘In a grave that’s decked with gold!’ Never be _my_ luck, live or dead!” “Shut up, Nock!” McAdams appeared with an armful of slender, twisted sticks. “Get yourself all het up, ye old fool!” “No use abusing the old fellow,” remarked Turner. He had put the diary aside and was perusing a small pocket volume of something. “Delirium, I suppose,” he added in a lower voice. “Let him die in peace!” “Aw,” McAdams muttered; “he’s all right. Tuckered out, tha’s all.” In a louder voice: “Lay still, old scout, will yer? They ain’t much grub left, and durn little game away up here. How we gonna get yer down to the Yukon ’less you rest up so we kin start again in a day or two? Cut out the gab!” “Gosh, but you’re a rough devil, McAdams!” exclaimed Turner petulantly. “Let him die in peace, can’t you?” “He’ll hear yer, you durn fool!” Turner scowled. Comrades though they were, and in a desperate plight, he disliked the unwonted familiarity of the uncouth man more than he objected to the slur. “He won’t. He’s only hearing his own maudlin talk. Man, you’ve got no heart, no sentiment!” “Sentiment? What’s that?” Turner shrugged. “What you--haven’t got. Let him alone. Don’t nag him. It’s just a question of hours.” “I’m tryin’ to buck him up, tha’s all. Got to get him outer here purty soon. Reckon we kin stick him on one mule by bunching what’s left of the outfit an’ crowdin’ it on the other one.” “Impossible,” decided Turner, frowning. “We’ll simply do what we can for him till he--passes. Please speak to him kindly.” He turned again to his handy volume of the classics.