At the bar the talk was of gold. “I’ve cleaned up more than an ounce to the pan--not once, but a dozen times,” said Moosehide Charlie. “I took five ounces out of a test pan, an’ didn’t get all the flour gold, at that,” interrupted Camillo Bill, “an’ I’m bettin’ my whole dump will run better than an ounce to the pan.” “I’m tellin’ ye,” said Old Stuart Gordon, “Ye’re goin’ to see a hundred dollars to the pan before this winter’s out.” A general laugh followed: “Have another shot of hootch, Old Timer, an’ make it two hundred, an’ we’ll all get rich!” bantered Ace-In-The-Hole Brent. The old man wagged his head sagely, and redoubled his prophecy: “Aye, an’ ye’ll see two hundred to the pan before bed rock is reached. I’m tellin’ ye we’re right now ridin’ the biggest strike the world ever seen. But don’t let me hinder the orderin’ of the round of drinks. A wee bit tipple on a night like this hurts no man. Don’t the Gude Book say ‘take a leetle wine for thy stomach’s sake’? An’ the wine not bein’ handy, we’ll have to make whusky do.” The men laughed and drank, and the glasses were refilled, for Old Man Gordon, as he was called by the men of the Yukon, was a general favorite among them. He was not old, probably in his early fifties, but his grizzled beard and grey hair made him appear a veritable patriarch among them. For Dawson was a camp of young men. But grey hairs were not his sole distinction. He was the only man in camp who had brought his family with him. Originally a Hudson’s Bay Company employee, he had married the daughter of a factor in the Mackenzie River country, and several years before, bringing his wife and little daughter, had built a cabin on Birch Creek. When news of the up-river strike reached him, he abandoned his claim, loaded his family into a poling boat and was among the first to erect a cabin in the new camp. Another thing that differentiated him from the general run of his associates was his religious turn of mind. The deep-rooted Calvinism of his ancestors had taken firm hold of his rugged nature. No provocation could wring an oath from his lips, and his conversation was liberally besprinkled with quotations, and misquotations from “the Gude Book.” Strangely enough, this strict Calvinism, while it held him to a certain stern code of morals, seemed to take small offence at his occasional lapses from sobriety. He never gambled, but there were those who laughingly whispered that his natural Scotch canniness, more than his religion, was responsible for his aversion to the gaming tables. Be that as it may, gamble he would not, and the suggestion of poker or roulette generally called forth a vehement discourse upon the frivolity and worldliness of “riskin’ gude gold on the turn of a card or the spin of a wheel!”