“Strike me blind, but you’re a ’ustler,” he said admiringly, his head cocked to one side, as his host bustled about.  “You never ’ort to ’ave gone Klondiking.  It’s the keeper of a pub’ you was laid out for.  An’ it’s often as I ’ave ‘eard the lads up an’ down the river speak o’ you, but I ’adn’t no idea you was so jolly nice.”

Jacob Kent experienced a tremendous yearning to try his shotgun on him, but the fascination of the gash was too potent.  This was the real Man with the Gash, the man who had so often robbed him in the spirit.  This, then, was the embodied entity of the being whose astral form had been projected into his dreams, the man who had so frequently harbored designs against his hoard; hence—­there could be no other conclusion—­this Man with the Gash had now come in the flesh to dispossess him.  And that gash!  He could no more keep his eyes from it than stop the beating of his heart.  Try as he would, they wandered back to that one point as inevitably as the needle to the pole.

“Do it ’urt you?” Jim Cardegee thundered suddenly, looking up from the spreading of his blankets and encountering the rapt gaze of the other.  “It strikes me as ’ow it ’ud be the proper thing for you to draw your jib, douse the glim, an’ turn in, seein’ as ‘ow it worrits you.  Jes’ lay to that, you swab, or so ’elp me I’ll take a pull on your peak-purchases!”

Kent was so nervous that it took three puffs to blow out the slush-lamp, and he crawled into his blankets without even removing his moccasins.  The sailor was soon snoring lustily from his hard bed on the floor, but Kent lay staring up into the blackness, one hand on the shotgun, resolved not to close his eyes the whole night.  He had not had an opportunity to secrete his five pounds of gold, and it lay in the ammunition box at the head of his bunk.  But, try as he would, he at last dozed off with the weight of his dust heavy on his soul.  Had he not inadvertently fallen asleep with his mind in such condition, the somnambulic demon would not have been invoked, nor would Jim Cardegee have gone mining next day with a dish-pan.

The fire fought a losing battle, and at last died away, while the frost penetrated the mossy chinks between the logs and chilled the inner atmosphere.  The dogs outside ceased their howling, and, curled up in the snow, dreamed of salmon-stocked heavens where dog-drivers and kindred task-masters were not.  Within, the sailor lay like a log, while his host tossed restlessly about, the victim of strange fantasies.  As midnight drew near he suddenly threw off the blankets and got up.  It was remarkable that he could do what he then did without ever striking a light.  Perhaps it was because of the darkness that he kept his eyes shut, and perhaps it was for fear he would see the terrible gash on the cheek of his visitor; but, be this as it may, it is a fact that, unseeing, he opened his ammunition box, put a heavy charge into the muzzle of the shotgun without spilling a particle, rammed it down with double wads, and then put everything away and got back into bed.