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 whom 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 vigor lost in this necessary translation.

“In course.  Certainly.  Thet’s it,” said the Old Man with a sympathetic frown.  “Thar’s no trouble about thet.  It’s my own house, built every stick on it myself.  Don’t you be afeard o’ her, boys.  She may cut up a trifle rough,—­ez wimmin do,—­but she’ll come round.”  Secretly the Old Man trusted to the exaltation of liquor and the power of courageous example to sustain him in such an emergency.

As yet, Dick Bullen, the oracle and leader of Simpson’s Bar, had not spoken.  He now took his pipe from his lips.  “Old Man, how’s that yer Johnny gettin’ on?  Seems to me he didn’t look so peart last time I seed him on the bluff heavin’ rocks at Chinamen.  Didn’t seem to take much interest in it.  Thar was a gang of ’em by yar yesterday,—­drownded out up the river,—­and I kinder thought o’ Johnny, and how he’d miss ’em!  May be now, we’d be in the way ef he wus sick?”