“An’ so,” continued Gordon, without deigning to notice the interruption, “I hit out gude an’ early this mornin’ for the claim, hopin’ to pan out an ounce, maybe two, afore night. I built a gude fire in the shaft, an’ in the shack I melted the ice, an’ it was along about noon I brought up my first bucket of gravel and carried it into the shack. But ’twas not till I finished washin’ that I had any idee what I’d got!” His voice, which had subsided into something of its normal tones as he talked, again leaped into the falsetto of excitement. “Ye should have be’n there to see for ye’re selves--when the last bit of muddy water sloshed from the pan! There was no gravel to be seen. Yellow gold--spread even, an’ thick! ’Twas like peerin’ into a firkin of butter! Losh! I squatted there like a daftie, starin’ down into the pan--a minute--ten minutes--mebbe an hour. I had no heed of time. Then I weighed up, an’ my hands was shakin’ so at first I bungled the job. There was flour gold in that pan that I didn’t get. It’s layin’ back there on the floor of the shack. I got what I could in the sack at last, an’ then I started fer here. I’d got mebbe it’s twenty rod before I bogged down in the snow, an’ I noticed I’d forgot my snowshoes, an’ I had to waller back an’ get ’em.” Across the room Camillo Bill paused in the riffling of the cards, and regarded the close-packed crowd with a twisted grin: “You c’n take ’em off now, Gordon. Mac’s floor is toler’ble solid. You won’t bog down here.” “An’ only last night,” quavered Gordon, “I offered to risk the claim agin ten thousan’! Where’s MacShane? Where’s the man that wouldn’t put up ten thousan’ agin a claim ’twould have paid him out in the first twenty pans?” From his seat at the table Camillo Bill surveyed the scene with interest. He noted that no one was paying any attention to Gordon, now. Noted, also, a certain restlessness, a tenseness that seemed to fill the air, and manifested itself in the quick tying of cap strings, and the nervous buttoning of coats. Several of the girls who had slipped away unobserved, reappeared at the foot of the stairs, dressed for the trail. Here and there, men were drawing on parkas. “I’d ort to let ’em go ahead an’ stampede their fool heads off,” grinned Camillo Bill to himself. “’Bout half of ’em thinks MacShane played it low down on Gordon, an’ it would serve ’em right.” There was a sudden concerted rush for the door, a rush that seemed to include every man and woman in the room except Gordon, and Horse Face Joe, who, clutching the bar, blinked in maudlin solemnity as he vainly tried to sense the purport of what was going on about him. Even the bartenders had torn off their white aprons and were frenziedly donning coats, caps, and mittens.