When she went down to breakfast she was bidden to a vacant seat on the giant’s left. The other belonged to one of the two ex-governors on board. But this particular excellency was not up yet. Beyond the place reserved was a lean lathe of a man, with a voracious appetite. Opposite, sat a big, shy individual, to whom people spoke deferentially as “Senator Cochrane.” Next him a slim, attractive-looking woman, with fair hair, too young, you would have said, to be the mother of the girl beside her; but this pretty little person in her teens was Mrs. L’Estrange’s daughter, so said the giant. What on earth could be taking people like that? The giant didn’t know. Neither did the person next him, a gentleman with a white “goatee,” who told the company that, as for himself, though, like everybody else, he expected to get a claim, he was taking sixty dozen chickens to Nome, and was “dead sure to make a good thing of it.” He longed to talk more about chickens, and was obviously disturbed by his stout friend further down, who would keep shouting remarks to the chicken-merchant about thirty-eight horses he had on board, and whose conveyance to Nome was costing the fat gentleman $100 apiece; and he didn’t grudge it. Indeed, the horses’ quarters were so superior to the fat gentleman’s own, that he’d “been thinkin’.” There wus one o’ them horses—a daisy lot they were—but there wus one of ’em he’d taken a dislike to. Didn’t know why, quite groundless—but the fat man was like that. His wife said he was notional. Perhaps she was right. He never contradicted a lady. But, anyways, he was goin’ to give up his own first-class accommodation. In future he would bunk with the horses. And the one he had a “pick on,” the mare with one white stocking and a star on her forehead, she should have berth 147. If you had a quite groundless but deadly spite against any one, that was a sure way to fix her, just put her in berth 147. “Anyways—ladies first,” he wound up, handing to the pretty mother of the young girl a vast dish, in which slabs of fat bacon floated in an inch of grease. Not only the horse-dealer and the giant were attentive to the supposed wants of the three women who appeared at breakfast. Two of the roughest-looking of the men had stood aside on Hildegarde’s entrance to let her go first, and there were those who warmly recommended the cold bully-beef, and yet others who urged upon her the excellence of the hot buckwheats. Could these be the wild animals who had roared and ravened outside the night before?