"Then what struck you as wonderful about them?" I inquired, a little at sea as to his line of thought. "It's not _them_ that's wonderful, Witter. It's you. I said you were a wonder. And you are." "And why am I a wonder?" I asked, with the drip of the honey no longer embarrassing my modesty. "Witter, _you're a wonder to get away with it_!" was Pip's solemnly intoned reply. "To get away with it?" I repeated. "Yes; to make it go down! To get 'em trussed and gagged and hog-tied! To make 'em come and eat out of your hand and then holler for more! For I've been up there in the British Yukon for fourteen nice comfortable years, Witter, and I've kind o' got to know the country. I know how folks live up there, and what the laws are. And it may strike you as queer, friend-author, but folks up in that district are uncommonly like folks down here in the States. And in the Klondike and this same British Yukon there is a Firearms Act which makes it against the law for any civilian to tote a gun. And that law is sure carried out. Fact is, there's no _need_ for a gun. And even if you did smuggle one in, the Mounted Police would darned soon take it away from you!" I sat staring at him. "But all those motion-pictures," I gasped. "And all those novels about--" "That's why I say you're a wonder," broke in the genial-eyed Pip. "You can fool _all_ the people _all_ the time! You've done it. And you keep on doing it. You can put 'em to sleep and take it out of their pants pocket before they know they've gone by-by. Why, you've even got 'em tranced off in the matter of everyday school-geography. You've had some of those hero-guys o' yours mush seven or eight hundred miles, and on a birch-bark toboggan, between dinner and supper. And if that ain't genius, I ain't ever seen it bound up in a reading-book!" That dinner was a mile-stone in my life, all right, but not after the manner I had expected. For as I sat there in a cold sweat of apprehension crowned with shame, Pip Conners told me many things about Alaska and the Klondike. He told me many things that were new to me, dishearteningly, discouragingly, devitalizingly new to me. Without knowing it, he poignarded me, knifed me through and through. Without dreaming what he was doing, he eviscerated me. He left me a hollow and empty mask of an author. He left me a homeless exile, with the iron gates of Fact swung sternly shut on what had been a Fairy Land of Romance, a Promised Land of untrammelled and care-free imaginings. That was my first sleepless night.