The door was kicked open, and Del Bishop staggered in with a load of fire-wood.  His breath had so settled on his face in a white rime that he could not speak.  Such a condition was ever a hardship with the man, so he thrust his face forthwith into the quivering heat above the stove.  In a trice the frost was started and the thawed streamlets dancing madly on the white-hot surface beneath.  Then the ice began to fall from is beard in chunks, rattling on the lid-tops and simmering spitefully till spurted upward in clouds of steam.

“And so you witness an actual phenomenon, illustrative of the three forms of matter,” Vance laughed, mimicking the monotonous tones of the demonstrator; “solid, liquid, and vapor.  In another moment you will have the gas.”

“Th—­th—­that’s all very well,” Bishop spluttered, wrestling with an obstructing piece of ice until it was wrenched from his upper lip and slammed stoveward with a bang.

“How cold do you make it, Del?  Fifty?”

“Fifty?” the pocket-miner demanded with unutterable scorn, wiping his face.  “Quicksilver’s been solid for hours, and it’s been gittin’ colder an’ colder ever since.  Fifty?  I’ll bet my new mittens against your old moccasins that it ain’t a notch below seventy.”

“Think so?”

“D’ye want to bet?”

Vance nodded laughingly.

“Centigrade or Fahrenheit?” Bishop asked, suddenly suspicious.

“Oh, well, if you want my old moccasins so badly,” Vance rejoined, feigning to be hurt by the other’s lack of faith, “why, you can have them without betting.”

Del snorted and flung himself down on the opposite bunk.  “Think yer funny, don’t you?” No answer forthcoming, he deemed the retort conclusive, rolled over, and fell to studying the moss chinks.

Fifteen minutes of this diversion sufficed.  “Play you a rubber of crib before bed,” he challenged across to the other bunk.

“I’ll go you.”  Corliss got up, stretched, and moved the kerosene lamp from the shelf to the table, “Think it will hold out?” he asked, surveying the oil-level through the cheap glass.

Bishop threw down the crib-board and cards, and measured the contents of the lamp with his eye.  “Forgot to fill it, didn’t I?  Too late now.  Do it to-morrow.  It’ll last the rubber out, sure.”

Corliss took up the cards, but paused in the shuffling.  “We’ve a big trip before us, Del, about a month from now, the middle of March as near as I can plan it,—­up the Stuart River to McQuestion; up McQuestion and back again down the Mayo; then across country to Mazy May, winding up at Henderson Creek—­”

“On the Indian River?”

“No,” Corliss replied, as he dealt the hands; “just below where the Stuart taps the Yukon.  And then back to Dawson before the ice breaks.”

The pocket-miner’s eyes sparkled.  “Keep us hustlin’; but, say, it’s a trip, isn’t it!  Hunch?”