The redheads were now in order, with squares of fried hominy, and for the moment Hodges held his peace.  This was Nixon’s opportunity, and he made the most of it.  He had been born on the eastern shore of Maryland and was brought up on canvasbacks, soft-shell crabs and terrapin—­not to mention clams and sheepshead.  Nixon therefore launched out on the habits of the sacred bird—­the crimes committed by the swivel-gun in the hands of the marketmen, the consequent scarcity of the game and the near approach of the time when the only rare specimens would be found in the glass cases of the museums, ending his talk with a graphic description of the great wooden platters of boiling-hot terrapin which were served to passengers crossing to Norfolk in the old days.  The servants would split off the hot shell—­this was turned top side down, used as a dish and filled with butter, pepper and salt, into which toothsome bits of the reptile, torn out by the guests’ forks, were dipped before being eaten.

The talk now caromed from birds, reptiles and fish to guns and tackles, and then to the sportsmen who used them, and then to the millionaires who owned the largest shares in the ducking clubs, and so on to the stock of the same, and finally to the one subject of the evening—­the one uppermost in everybody’s thoughts which so far had not been touched upon—­the Mukton Lode.  There was no question about the proper mechanism of the traps—­the directors were attending to that; the quality of the bait, too, seemed all that could be desired—­that was Breen’s part.  How many mice were nosing about was the question, and of the number how many would be inside when the spring snapped?

The Colonel, after a nod of his head and a reassuring glance from his host, took full charge of the field, soaring away with minute accounts of the last inspection of the mine.  He told how the “tailings” at Mukton City had panned out 30 per cent, to the ton—­ with two hundred thousand tons in the dump thrown away until the new smelter was started and they could get rid of the sulphides; of what Aetna Cobb’s Crest had done and Beals Hollow and Morgan Creek—­all on the same ridge, and was about launching out on the future value of Mukton Lode when Mason broke the silence by asking if any one present had heard of a mine somewhere in Nevada which an Englishman had bought and which had panned out $1,200 to the ton the first week and not a cent to the square mile ever afterward?  The Chicago man was the most important mouse of the lot, and the tone of his voice and his way of speaking seemed fraught with a purpose.

Breen leaned forward in rapt attention, and even Hodges and Portman (both of them were loaded to the scuppers with Mukton) stopped talking.