acially bitter type. They were not many, but in one sense they were the
backbone and force of the crowd, probably the less intelligent but the
more tenacious and consistent. They were black spots of gathering storm
in an electric atmosphere.

All converged upon the bar. Two assistants rushed the drinks along the
counter with flourishes, while Barbazon took in the cash and sharply
checked the rougher element, who were inclined to treat the bar as
a place for looting. Most of them, however, had a wholesome fear of
Barbazon, and also most of them wished to stand well with him--credit
was a good thing, even in a saloon.

For a little time the room was packed, then some of the more restless
spirits, their thirst assuaged, sallied forth to taste the lager and
old rye elsewhere, and "raise Cain" in the streets. When they went, it
became possible to move about more freely in the big bar-room, at the
end of which was a billiard-table. It was notable, however, that the
more sullen elements stayed. Some of them were strangers to each other.
Manitou was a distributing point for all radiations of the compass, and
men were thrown together in its streets who only saw one another once
or twice a year-when they went to the woods in the Fall or worked the
rivers in the Summer. Some were Mennonites, Doukhobors and Finlanders,
some Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders. Others again were birds of
passage who would probably never see Manitou in the future, but they
were mostly French, and mostly Catholic, and enemies of the Orange
Lodges wherever they were, east or west or north or south. They all had
a common ground of unity--half-savage coureurs-de-bois, river-drivers,
railway-men, factory hands, cattlemen, farmers, labourers; they had a
gift for prejudice, and taking sides on something or other was as the
breath of the nostrils to them.

The greater number of the crowd were, however, excitable, good-natured
men, who were by instinct friendly, save when their prejudices were
excited; and their oaths and exclamations were marvels of droll
ingenuity. Most of them were still too good-humoured with drink to be
dangerous, but all hoped for trouble at the Orange funeral on principle,
and the anticipated strike had elements of "thrill." They were of a
class, however, who would swing from what was good-humour to deadly
anger in a minute, and turn a wind of mere prejudice into a hurricane of
life and death with the tick of a clock. They would all pr