“I don’t ‘want.’ But I can’t turn anybody out of his seat, and they’re all taken.” Well, if he were content with this arrangement it hardly behooved her to protest. “Come and be introduced to my Blumpitty. I can tell from the look on his face exactly what he’s talking about.” “What?” “Come and listen.” “Ya-as,” Blumpitty was saying, ostensibly to Governor Reinhart, but really to a distinguished and rapidly increasing circle, “Ya-as, queerest feller ever I see.” “Who was?” “Why, the feller I found dyin’ on the coast up above Cape Polaris. The man that gave me the tip. I can see that feller now. Couldn’t get his face out o’ my head fur months. His eyes—used t’ see them eyes in my sleep.” Blumpitty paused, and seemed to struggle feebly with an incubus. “Never see such eyes in any man’s head ’fore nor since.” Again he paused an instant to think out something. “Reckon it makes a man look like that.” “What does?” demanded the Governor. “Knockin’ up agin the Mother Lode.” “Oh, the Mother Lode!” said Reinhart, slightingly. “Ya-as; those of us that’s practical miners”—his look weeded out the Governor—“guess we all know that every bit o’ gold that’s found its way to the creek bottoms and the coast, it’s all come from the Mother Lode, off there in them low ground—down hills to the North.” The breathless respect with which this information was received by the rest, was broken in upon by the Governor’s roaring a great infidel laugh. “Why, Joslin, here, tells me the gold comes out o’ the sea!” “Maybe he believes it,” says Blumpitty, sympathetically. “Believe it!” bellowed Isaiah, sticking his head over Dr. Daly’s shoulder. “So’ll you believe it when you get to Nome. The further out you go at low tide the richer you’ll find it.” Blumpitty’s pale-eyed pity for his delusion seemed to get on Joslin’s nerves. “Wasn’t I _there_ when Jake Hitz and Tough Nut went way out with a wheelbarra’?” “Any man can go out with a wheelbarra’,” said Blumpitty. “Yes, but it ain’t every man can come back with pay dirt and rock out what they did.” Blumpitty just smiled. “Twenty-two hundred dollars, sir!” “Guess you weren’t watchin’ which way they went for that dirt?” said one of the capitalists. “That’s right!” laughed his partner. “Tough Nut must have got that twenty-two hundred out of the tundra.” “Hope that isn’t where you fellows count on findin’ gold,” said Joslin, sympathetically. “We just about are.” “Why, don’t you know the tundra’s froze the year round?” “That’s why we’re takin’ up thawin’ machines—$90,000 worth.” “Might as well take up ninety thousand pianners and play toons to the tundra.” As though this idea had some special significance for him, a poorly-dressed boy detached himself from the group with a cheerful whistling of the eternal Boulanger march. “There’s a hell of a lot o’ machinery goin’; I ain’t sorry I’m takin’ in chickens m’self,” observed Hildegarde’s table companion.