Corliss, having terminated a buzz with a Miss Mortimer on the decadence of the French symbolists, encountered Del Bishop.  But the pocket-miner remembered him at once from the one glimpse he had caught of Corliss standing by his tent-door in Happy Camp.  Was almighty obliged to him for his night’s hospitality to Miss Frona, seein’ as he’d ben side-tracked down the line; that any kindness to her was a kindness to him; and that he’d remember it, by God, as long as he had a corner of a blanket to pull over him.  Hoped it hadn’t put him out.  Miss Frona’d said that bedding was scarce, but it wasn’t a cold night (more blowy than crisp), so he reckoned there couldn’t ‘a’ ben much shiverin’.  All of which struck Corliss as perilous, and he broke away at the first opportunity, leaving the pocket-miner yearning for the door.

But Dave Harney, who had not come by mistake, avoided gluing himself to the first chair.  Being an Eldorado king, he had felt it incumbent to assume the position in society to which his numerous millions entitled him; and though unused all his days to social amenities other than the out-hanging latch-string and the general pot, he had succeeded to his own satisfaction as a knight of the carpet.  Quick to take a cue, he circulated with an aplomb which his striking garments and long shambling gait only heightened, and talked choppy and disconnected fragments with whomsoever he ran up against.  The Miss Mortimer, who spoke Parisian French, took him aback with her symbolists; but he evened matters up with a goodly measure of the bastard lingo of the Canadian voyageurs, and left her gasping and meditating over a proposition to sell him twenty-five pounds of sugar, white or brown.  But she was not unduly favored, for with everybody he adroitly turned the conversation to grub, and then led up to the eternal proposition.  “Sugar or bust,” he would conclude gayly each time and wander on to the next.

But he put the capstone on his social success by asking Frona to sing the touching ditty, “I Left My Happy Home for You.”  This was something beyond her, though she had him hum over the opening bars so that she could furnish the accompaniment.  His voice was more strenuous than sweet, and Del Bishop, discovering himself at last, joined in raucously on the choruses.  This made him feel so much better that he disconnected himself from the chair, and when he finally got home he kicked up his sleepy tent-mate to tell him about the high time he’d had over at the Welse’s.  Mrs. Schoville tittered and thought it all so unique, and she thought it so unique several times more when the lieutenant of Mounted Police and a couple of compatriots roared “Rule Britannia” and “God Save the Queen,” and the Americans responded with “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” and “John Brown.”  Then big Alec Beaubien, the Circle City king, demanded the “Marseillaise,” and the company broke up chanting “Die Wacht am Rhein” to the frosty night.