"I could have had a wife for speaking at Kicking Horse," he said. "There is one for speaking now," said Shoepack. "In a few days I go North," Rainbow Pete went muttering. "There is gold at Dungeon Creek. I have seen samples of this vein." "She will be the less trouble to you then, if you are not satisfied on this question," said Shoepack Sam. Then Rainbow Pete said he was not so certain of her, on questioning himself. He was a modest man. "This palm-tree and the other designs you have not been speaking about will be enticing her," said Shoepack Sam. "But do not speak to her of going away at the time of asking her." "This is wisdom," said Rainbow Pete, and he put his lips to the flute, to be giving us a touch of music. This was a light reason for marriage, disn't it seem? This was what Willis Countryman called a marriage of convenience, in the fashion of frogs. Ay! It was convenient to them to be married. He was a great reader--Willis. So they were married, I'm telling you, but it's impossible to know what he said to her in speaking about it. They were married by the man called Justice of the Peace on Mushrat. This was before the blasting, and it was the first marriage on Mushrat. Then they lived together in the little house she had chosen, sitting on the black ledge above Scarecrow Charlie's eating-place. Now it was a wonderment to Mushrat, to hear the sound of Rainbow Pete's old flute dropping from the dark ledge, by night, when they were taking their opinion of matrimony up there together, with a candle at the window. But now look here, when Shoepack Sam came plucking him at the elbow, saying, "Was I right or was I wrong?" then Rainbow Pete stared at him with his eyes like drills, and he said to him, "You were curious and nothing more." Oh my, isn't this the perversity of married men. They bore him a grudge on Mushrat, for his silence, because, disn't it seem, this was like a general marriage satisfying all men's souls. It was treasonable. Oh my, it was sailor's mischief to be living on that ledge, and dropping nothing but notes from his greasy flute. These are sweet but they are hard to be turning into language. Now one morning, when I saw him coming from the ledge with his bag of specimens over his shoulder, I saw without speaking to him that he was parching with his thirst for gold. He was going away into the bush, thinking no more of his new wife. Oh, he was a casual man. "How is this?" I said. "Can she be left alone on the ledge?" "Can she not?" said Rainbow Pete. "Old fellow, this is a substantial woman. She was alone before I came." "This is not the same thing," I said. "It is the same woman," said Rainbow Pete, "she will be missing nothing but the flute."