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Soon the camp was filled with men talking, laughing, chaffing like light-hearted boys.

“They are a little wild to-night,” said Graeme, “and to-morrow they’ll paint Black Rock red.”

Before many minutes had gone the last teamster was “washed up,” and all were standing about waiting impatiently for the cook’s signal–the supper to-night was to be “something of a feed”–when the sound of bells drew their attention to a light sleigh drawn by a buckskin broncho coming down the hillside at a great pace.

“The preacher, I’ll bet, by his driving,” said one of the men.

“Bedad, and it’s him has the foine nose for turkey!” said Blaney, a good-natured, jovial Irishman.

“Yes, or for pay-day, more like,” said Keefe, a black-browed, villainous fellow countryman of Blaney’s and, strange to say, his great friend.

Big Sandy McNaughton, a Canadian Highlander from Glengarry, rose up in wrath.

“Bill Keefe,” said he with deliberate emphasis, “you’ll just keep your dirty tongue off the minister; and as for your pay, it’s little he sees of it, or any one else except Mike Slavin, when you’s too dry to wait for some one to treat you, or perhaps Father Ryan, when the fear of hell-fire is on you.”

The men stood amazed at Sandy’s sudden anger and length of speech.

“Bon! Dat’s good for you, my bully boy,” said Baptiste, a wiry little French-Canadian, Sandy’s sworn ally and devoted admirer ever since the day when the big Scotchman, under great provocation, had knocked him clean off the dump into the river and then jumped in for him.

It was not till afterward I learned the cause of Sandy’s sudden wrath which urged him to such 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.”