ion to the
Mounted Police!' cried Bettles, to the crash of the empty cups.

The Priestly Prerogative

This is the story of a man who did not appreciate his wife; also, of a
woman who did him too great an honor when she gave herself to him.
Incidentally, it concerns a Jesuit priest who had never been known to
lie. He was an appurtenance, and a very necessary one, to the Yukon
country; but the presence of the other two was merely accidental. They
were specimens of the many strange waifs which ride the breast of a
gold rush or come tailing along behind.

Edwin Bentham and Grace Bentham were waifs; they were also tailing
along behind, for the Klondike rush of '97 had long since swept down
the great river and subsided into the famine-stricken city of Dawson.
When the Yukon shut up shop and went to sleep under a three-foot
ice-sheet, this peripatetic couple found themselves at the Five Finger
Rapids, with the City of Gold still a journey of many sleeps to the
north.

Many cattle had been butchered at this place in the fall of the year,
and the offal made a goodly heap. The three fellow-voyagers of Edwin
Bentham and wife gazed upon this deposit, did a little mental
arithmetic, caught a certain glimpse of a bonanza, and decided to
remain. And all winter they sold sacks of bones and frozen hides to the
famished dog-teams. It was a modest price they asked, a dollar a pound,
just as it came. Six months later, when the sun came back and the Yukon
awoke, they buckled on their heavy moneybelts and journeyed back to the
Southland, where they yet live and lie mightily about the Klondike they
never saw.

But Edwin Bentham--he was an indolent fellow, and had he not been
possessed of a wife, would have gladly joined issued in the dog-meat
speculation. As it was, she played upon his vanity, told him how great
and strong he was, how a man such as he certainly was could overcome
all obstacles and of a surety obtain the Golden Fleece. So he squared
his jaw, sold his share in the bones and hides for a sled and one dog,
and turned his snowshoes to the north. Needless to state, Grace
Bentham's snowshoes never allowed his tracks to grow cold. Nay, ere
their tribulations had seen three days, it was the man who followed in
the rear, and the woman who broke trail in advance. Of course, if
anybody hove in sight, the position was instantly reversed. Thus did
his manhood remain virgin to the travelers who passed like ghosts on
the silent tra