Kid is
clergyman because he has a square-cut coat that buttons up the front to
his chin. There ain't any Bible in camp, so he read some recipes out of
a baking-powder cook-book, after which Deaf Mike tries to play 'Taps' on
the cornet. But he's held the horn in his mit during the services, and,
the temperature being forty degrees below freezo, when he wets his lips
to play they stick to the mouthpiece and crab the hymn. As a whole, it
is an enjoyable affair, however, and the best-conducted funeral of the
winter. Everybody has a good time, though nothing rough.

"Now, I've been friendly to young Pete De Foe--him and I bunked
together--and the next night he comes to me, saying that he can't rest.
I see him as plain as I see you.

"'What's wrong?' says I. 'Are you cold?'

"'No. The ground is chilly, but it ain't that. Manard, the old hellion,
won't let me sleep. He's doing a sand jig on my grave. He says I won
that bet crooked and died ahead of time just to get his dog. He's sore
on you, too.'

"'What's he sore on me for?' says I.

"'He says he's an old man, and he'd 'a' died first if you hadn't put in
with me to double-cross him. He's laying for you,' says Pete.

"Well, I'm pretty sick myself, with a four months' diet of pea soup and
oatmeal, and when I wake up I think it's a dream. But the next night
Pete is back again, complaining worse than ever. It seems the ghost of
old man Manard is still buck-and-winging on Pete's coffin, and he begs
me to come down and call the old reprobate off so that he can get some
rest. He comes back the third night, the fourth, and the fifth, and by
and by Manard himself comes up to the cabin and begins to abuse me. He
says he wants his dog back, but naturally I can't give it to him. It
gets so that I can't sleep at all. Finally, when Pete ain't sitting on
my bunk Manard is calling me names and gritting his teeth at me. I begin
to fall off in weight like a jockey in a sweat bath. It gets so I have
to sit up all night in a chair and make the fellers prod me in the
stomach with a stick whenever I doze off. I tell you, stranger, it was
worse than horrible. I don't know how I made it through till spring.

"Well, in the early summer I get a letter from the steamboat agent at
Nome saying Manard's people out in the States have slipped him some
coin, with instructions to send the old man out so they can give him
decent burial. He offers me one-fifty to bring him down to the coast.
Now, this