“Men,” said Jim, when he had their full attention, “I’ve been accused of turning a crooked game. It isn’t so. I’ve played it fair, but had rare good luck. I owe Shakespeare George a debt. I’m paying it, full and square. And to pay it, and be quits with a clean slate, he demands that I play no more--any game--in Marook. It costs me a lot, for you’re a bunch of easy marks--suckers--with gold dust! But I pay! From this minute, now, I play nothing, gamble nothing in this camp, and am done!” The surprised silence following this strange assertion was broken by his big, hearty laugh, and the banging of his emphatic fist on the bar. Quite mockingly he backed away from George, doffed his hat, brought his heels together, and bowed deeply. “I’ve made good,” he said. “Othello’s occupation’s gone! But God speed the spring so that he may find other fields to conquer!” And he backed away, down the open space in front of the bar, and out of the door, while George’s face lighted with sudden interest at the sound of the double quotation. “That’s from the third act and the third scene,” said George delightedly, as if he had made a great discovery. And then: “It means that he’s lost his job! That’s the place where Othello talks about the dread clamorous counterfeiters. That Jim’s a scholar! That’s what he is--a scholar.” It was not the fear of enmities that kept us away from the camp on the banks of the Yukon in the weeks that followed that night, but the demands of work. Slowly the disappointment had come to us that our claims were not of the best, and that only by continuous effort could we hope to make them pay scant profit. Save on occasions when some of them passed on the trail we saw nothing of the men of Marook or Laughing Jim. Once we heard that the latter had complained that George had kept him from reaping the profits of the camp, and again that, loafing on the outer edge of his gambling world, he had angrily sworn that if he had been left undisturbed he would have made his fortune. I suppose there was some truth in his statement. Yet he held to his word, this unmoral, reckless vagabond who laughed. They said that he was still there, wearing, despite derision, his pointed-toed shoes, and manicuring his nails; but gambling not at all.