Pentfield tossed the banjo into a bunk and quoted:-

   “Hear me babble what the weakest won’t confess—­
   I am Memory and Torment—­I am Town! 
   I am all that ever went with evening dress!”

The other man winced where he sat and dropped his head forward on the table.  Pentfield resumed the monotonous drumming with his knuckles.  A loud snap from the door attracted his attention.  The frost was creeping up the inside in a white sheet, and he began to hum:-

   “The flocks are folded, boughs are bare,
   The salmon takes the sea;
   And oh, my fair, would I somewhere
   Might house my heart with thee.”

Silence fell and was not again broken till Billebedam arrived and threw the dice box on the table.

“Um much cold,” he said.  “Oleson um speak to me, um say um Yukon freeze last night.”

“Hear that, old man!” Pentfield cried, slapping Hutchinson on the shoulder.  “Whoever wins can be hitting the trail for God’s country this time tomorrow morning!”

He picked up the box, briskly rattling the dice.

“What’ll it be?”

“Straight poker dice,” Hutchinson answered.  “Go on and roll them out.”

Pentfield swept the dishes from the table with a crash and rolled out the five dice.  Both looked tragedy.  The shake was without a pair and five-spot high.

“A stiff!” Pentfield groaned.

After much deliberating Pentfield picked up all the five dice and put them in the box.

“I’d shake to the five if I were you,” Hutchinson suggested.

“No, you wouldn’t, not when you see this,” Pentfield replied, shaking out the dice.

Again they were without a pair, running this time in unbroken sequence from two to six.

“A second stiff!” he groaned.  “No use your shaking, Corry.  You can’t lose.”

The other man gathered up the dice without a word, rattled them, rolled them out on the table with a flourish, and saw that he had likewise shaken a six-high stiff.

“Tied you, anyway, but I’ll have to do better than that,” he said, gathering in four of them and shaking to the six.  “And here’s what beats you!”

But they rolled out deuce, tray, four, and five—­a stiff still and no better nor worse than Pentfield’s throw.

Hutchinson sighed.

“Couldn’t happen once in a million times,” said.

“Nor in a million lives,” Pentfield added, catching up the dice and quickly throwing them out.  Three fives appeared, and, after much delay, he was rewarded by a fourth five on the second shake.  Hutchinson seemed to have lost his last hope.

But three sixes turned up on his first shake.  A great doubt rose in the other’s eyes, and hope returned into his.  He had one more shake.  Another six and he would go over the ice to salt water and the States.

He rattled the dice in the box, made as though to cast them, hesitated, and continued rattle them.