Haney was feeling extremely well, and talked with so much of his old time vigor and slash of epithet that his little audience was quite entranced. He enlarged upon the experiences of a year he had spent in Alaska. "Mining up there in them days made gambling slow business," he said. (He had told Bertha that he had made an attempt to get out of "the trade," but she was content to have him put it on less self-righteous grounds.) He contrived to make his hearers feel very keenly the pitiless, long-drawn ferocity of that sunless winter. He made it plain why men in that far land came together in vile dens to drink and gamble, and Moss glowed with the wonder and delight of those great boys who could rush away to the arctic edge of the world and die with laughing curses on their lips. "What did you all do it for?" he asked, bluntly. "For money?" "Partly--but more for the love of doing something hard. No man but a miser punishes himself for love of gold--it's for love of what the stuff will buy, that men fight the snows." While Haney talked of these things Bertha's eyes were musingly turned on the face of the sculptor, and her mind was far from the scenes which Mart so vividly described. This side of his life no longer amused her--on the contrary she shrank from any disclosure of his savage career. She was now as unjust in her criticism as she had been fond in her admiration, and when with darkening brow she cut short his garrulous flow of narrative Julia perceived her displeasure. Haney apologized, handsomely. "It's natural for the ould bedraggled eagle in the cage with a club on his wrist to dream of the circles he used to cut and the fish he set claw to. In them days I feared no man's weight, and no night or stream. 'Twas all joyous battle to me, and now, as I sit here on velvet with only to snap me fingers for anything I want, I look back at thim fierce old times with a sneaking kind o' wish to live 'em all over again. Bertie knows me weakness. I would talk forever did she lave me go on; but 'tis no blame to her--it was a cruel, bad, careless life." "When I come West," said Moss, sincerely, "we'll go camping together, and every night by the fire we'll smoke and you can tell me all about your journeys. I assure you they are epic to me." Dr. Brent, a little later, put in a private word to Bertie. "Now you're going back into the high country and you'll find it necessary to watch the Captain pretty closely. I suspect he'll find his heart thumping briskly when he reaches the Springs. He may stand that altitude all right, but don't let him go higher. He will be taking chances if he goes above six thousand feet. You'd better have Steel of Denver come down and examine him to see how he stands the first few days. I mention Steel because I know him--I've no doubt there are plenty of good men in the Springs." "What'll I do if he's worse?" "Bring him back here or go to sea level--only beware of high passes." CHAPTER XXIV