for
bread and cakes in many varieties, rice and beans and barley, which
were to form the staple portion of the stews, cabbage and beets and
onions in smaller measure--for at this season of the year the
price was high--sides of pork, ropes of sausages, and roasts of
beef from neck and flank. Through the good offices of the butcher
boy that supplied the New West Hotel, purchased with Anka's shyest
smile and glance, were secured a considerable accumulation of shank
bones and ham bones, pork ribs and ribs of beef, and other scraps
too often despised by the Anglo-Saxon housekeeper, all of which
would prove of the greatest value in the enrichment of the soups.
For puddings there were apples and prunes, raisins and cranberries.
The cook of the New West Hotel, catching something of Anka's generous
enthusiasm, offered pies by the dozen, and even the proprietor himself,
learning of the preparations and progress, could think of nothing so
appropriate to the occasion as a case of Irish whiskey. This, however,
Anka, after some deliberation, declined, suggesting beer instead,
and giving as a reason her experience, namely, that "whiskey make
too quick fight, you bet." A fight was inevitable, but it would be
a sad misfortune if this necessary part of the festivities should
occur too early in the programme.

Gradually, during the days of the week immediately preceding the
ceremony, there began to accumulate in the shacks about, viands of
great diversity, which were stored in shelves, in cupboards,--where
there were any,--under beds, and indeed in any and every available
receptacle. The puddings, soups and stews, which, after all, were to
form the main portion of the eating, were deposited in empty beer
kegs, of which every shack could readily furnish a few, and set out
to freeze, in which condition they would preserve their perfect
flavour. Such diligence and such prudence did Anka show in the
supervision of all these arrangements, that when the day before the
feast arrived, on making her final round of inspection, everything
was discovered to be in readiness for the morrow, with the single
exception that the beer had not arrived. But this was no over-sight
on the part of Jacob, to whom this portion of the feast had been
entrusted. It was rather due to a prudence born of experience that
the beer should be ordered to be delivered at the latest possible hour.
A single beer keg is an object of consuming interest to the Galician
and subje