The crowd sighed audibly, broke up into couples, and followed them.  Freda pouted and went in with Cal Galbraith; but she had a good heart and a sure tongue, and she spoiled his oysters for him.  What she said is of no importance, but his face went red and white at intervals, and he swore repeatedly and savagely at himself.

The supper-room was filled with a pandemonium of voices, which ceased suddenly as Cal Galbraith stepped over to his wife’s table.  Since the unmasking considerable weights of dust had been placed as to the outcome.  Everybody watched with breathless interest.

Harrington’s blue eyes were steady, but under the overhanging tablecloth a Smith & Wesson balanced on his knee.  Madeline looked up, casually, with little interest.

‘May—­may I have the next round dance with you?’ the King stuttered.

The wife of the King glanced at her card and inclined her head.

An Odyssey of the North

The sleds were singing their eternal lament to the creaking of the harness and the tinkling bells of the leaders; but the men and dogs were tired and made no sound.  The trail was heavy with new-fallen snow, and they had come far, and the runners, burdened with flint-like quarters of frozen moose, clung tenaciously to the unpacked surface and held back with a stubbornness almost human.

Darkness was coming on, but there was no camp to pitch that night.  The snow fell gently through the pulseless air, not in flakes, but in tiny frost crystals of delicate design.  It was very warm—­barely ten below zero—­and the men did not mind.  Meyers and Bettles had raised their ear flaps, while Malemute Kid had even taken off his mittens.

The dogs had been fagged out early in the after noon, but they now began to show new vigor.  Among the more astute there was a certain restlessness—­an impatience at the restraint of the traces, an indecisive quickness of movement, a sniffing of snouts and pricking of ears.  These became incensed at their more phlegmatic brothers, urging them on with numerous sly nips on their hinder quarters.  Those, thus chidden, also contracted and helped spread the contagion.  At last the leader of the foremost sled uttered a sharp whine of satisfaction, crouching lower in the snow and throwing himself against the collar.  The rest followed suit.

There was an ingathering of back hands, a tightening of traces; the sleds leaped forward, and the men clung to the gee poles, violently accelerating the uplift of their feet that they might escape going under the runners.  The weariness of the day fell from them, and they whooped encouragement to the dogs.  The animals responded with joyous yelps.  They were swinging through the gathering darkness at a rattling gallop.

‘Gee!  Gee!’ the men cried, each in turn, as their sleds abruptly left the main trail, heeling over on single runners like luggers on the wind.