h unwonted length of speech. It was not simply
that the Presbyterian blood carried with it reverence for the minister,
but that he had a vivid remembrance of how, only a month ago, the
minister had got him out of Mike Slavin's saloon and out of the clutches
of Keefe and Slavin and their gang of bloodsuckers.

Keefe started up with a curse. Baptiste sprang to Sandy's side, slapped
him on the back, and called out:

"You keel him, I'll hit [eat] him up, me."

It looked as if there might be a fight, when a harsh voice said in a
low, savage tone:

"Stop your row, you fools; settle it, if you want to, somewhere else."

I turned, and was amazed to see old man Nelson, who was very seldom
moved to speech.

There was a look of scorn on his hard iron-gray face, and of such
settled fierceness as made me quite believe the tales I had heard of his
deadly fights in the mines at the coast. Before any reply could be made
the minister drove up and called out in a cheery voice:

"Merry Christmas, boys! Hello, Sandy! _Comment ca va_, Baptiste? How do
you do, Mr. Graeme?"

"First rate. Let me introduce my friend, Mr. Connor, sometime medical
student, now artist, hunter, and tramp at large, but not a bad sort."

"A man to be envied," said the minister, smiling. "I am glad to know any
friend of Mr. Graeme's."

I liked Mr. Craig from the first. He had good eyes that looked straight
out at you, a clean-cut, strong face well set on his shoulders, and
altogether an upstanding, manly bearing. He insisted on going with Sandy
to the stables to see Dandy, his broncho, put up.

"Decent fellow," said Graeme; "but though he is good enough to his
broncho, it is Sandy that's in his mind now."

"Does he come out often? I mean, are you part of his parish, so to
speak?"

"I have no doubt he thinks so; and I'm blowed if he doesn't make the
Presbyterians of us think so too." And he added after a pause: "A dandy
lot of parishioners we are for any man. There's Sandy, now, he would
knock Keefe's head off as a kind of religious exercise; but to-morrow
Keefe will be sober and Sandy will be drunk as a lord, and the drunker
he is the better Presbyterian he'll be, to the preacher's disgust." Then
after another pause he added bitterly: "But it is not for me to throw
rocks at Sandy. I am not the same kind of fool, but I am a fool of
several other sorts."

Then the cook came out and beat a tattoo on the bottom of a dishpan.
Baptiste answered with a yell