"I am sure that--" "Frona could not display poor taste, eh ?" Corliss turned on his heel and walked out, and left Colonel Trethaway smiling grimly.
Vance Corliss never knew how many people, directly and indirectly, had his cause at heart that Christmas week.

Two men strove in particular, one for him and one for the sake of Frona.

Pete Whipple, an old-timer in the land, possessed an Eldorado claim directly beneath French Hill, also a woman of the country for a wife,--a swarthy _breed_, not over pretty, whose Indian mother had mated with a Russian fur-trader some thirty years before at Kutlik on the Great Delta.

Bishop went down one Sunday morning to yarn away an hour or so with Whipple, but found the wife alone in the cabin.

She talked a bastard English gibberish which was an anguish to hear, so the pocket-miner resolved to smoke a pipe and depart without rudeness.