“Jest heard the best thing out, boys! Ye know Smiley, over yar—Jim Smiley—funniest man in the Bar? Well, Jim was jest telling the richest yarn about——” “Smiley’s a —— fool,” interrupted a gloomy voice. “A particular —— skunk,” added another, in sepulchral accents. A silence followed these positive statements. The Old Man glanced quickly around the group. Then his face slowly changed. “That’s so,” he said reflectively, after a pause; “certainly a sort of a skunk and suthin’ of a fool. In course.” He was silent for a moment, as in painful contemplation of the unsavouriness and folly of the unpopular Smiley. “Dismal weather, ain’t it?” he added, now fully embarked on the current of prevailing sentiment. “Mighty rough papers on the boys, and no show for money this season. And to-morrow’s Christmas.” There was a movement among the men at this announcement, but whether of satisfaction or disgust was not plain. “Yes,” continued the Old Man in the lugubrious tone he had within the last few moments unconsciously adopted—“yes, Christmas, and to-night’s Christmas-eve. Ye see, boys, I kinder thought—that is, I sorter had an idee, jest passin like you know—that may be ye’d all like to come over to my house to-night and have a sort of tear round. But I suppose, now, you wouldn’t? Don’t feel like it, may be?” he added, with anxious sympathy, peering into the faces of his companions. “Well, I don’t know,” responded Tom Flynn, with some cheerfulness. “P’r’aps we may. But how about your wife, Old Man? What does she say to it?” The Old Man hesitated. His conjugal experience had not been a happy one, and the fact was known to Simpson’s Bar. His first wife, a delicate, pretty little woman, had suffered keenly and secretly from the jealous suspicions of her husband, until one day he invited the whole Bar to his house to expose her infidelity. On arriving, the party found the shy, _petite_ creature quietly engaged in her household duties, and retired abashed and discomfited. But the sensitive woman did not easily recover from the shock of this extraordinary outrage. It was with difficulty she regained her equanimity sufficiently to release her lover from the closet in which he was concealed, and escape with him. She left a boy of three years to comfort her bereaved husband. The Old Man’s present wife had been his cook. She was large, loyal, and aggressive. Before he could reply, Joe Dimmick suggested with great directness that it was the “Old Man’s house,” and that, invoking the Divine Power, if the case were his own, he would invite who he pleased, even if in so doing he imperilled his salvation. The Powers of Evil, he further remarked, should contend against him vainly. All this delivered with a terseness and vigour lost in this necessary translation.