At length as day began to dawn he fell into a dead, dreamless slumber, waking, when it was broad day, to find Mackenzie sitting at the table eating breakfast, and with a bottle beside him.  French was not to be seen, but Kalman could hear his heavy breathing from the inner room.  To Kalman it seemed as if he were still in the grip of some ghastly nightmare.  He rubbed his eyes and looked again at Mackenzie in stupid amazement.

“What are you glowering at yonder, Callum, man?” said Mackenzie, pleasantly ignoring the events of the previous day.  “Your breakfast iss ready for you.  You will be hungry after your day’s work.  Oh, yes, I haf been seeing it, and it iss well done, Callum, mannie.”

Somehow his smiling face and his kindly tone filled Kalman with rage.  He sprang out of his bunk and ran out of the house.  He hated the sight of the smiling, pleasant-voiced Mackenzie.  But his boy’s hunger drove him in to breakfast.

“Well, Callum, man,” began Mackenzie in pleasant salutation.

“My name is Kalman,” snapped the boy.

“Never mind, it iss a good name, whatefer.  But I am saying we will be getting into the pitaties after breakfast.  Can ye drop pitaties?”

“Show me how,” said Kalman shortly.

“And that I will,” said Mackenzie affably, helping himself to the bottle.

“How many bottles of that stuff are there left?” asked Kalman disgustedly.

“And why would you be wanting to know?” enquired Mackenzie cautiously.  “You would not be taking any of the whiskey yourself?” he added in grave reproof.

“Oh, go on! you old fool!” replied the boy angrily.  “You will never be any good till it is all done, I know.”

Kalman spoke out of full and varied experience of the ways of men with the lust of drink in them.

“Well, well, maybe so.  But the more there iss for me, the less there iss for him,” said Mackenzie, jerking his head toward the inner door.

“Why not empty it out?” said Kalman in an eager undertone.

“Hoot! toot! man, and would you be guilty of sinful waste like yon?  No, no, never with Malcolm Mackenzie’s consent.  And you would not be doing such a deed yourself?” Mackenzie enquired somewhat anxiously.

Kalman shook his head.

“No,” he said, “he might be angry.  But,” continued the boy, “those potatoes must be finished to-day.  I heard him speaking about them yesterday.”

“And that iss true enough.  They are two weeks late now.”

“Come on, then,” cried Kalman, as Mackenzie reached for the bottle.  “Come and show me how.”

“There iss no hurry,” said the deliberate Mackenzie, drinking his glass with slow relish.  “But first the pitaties are to be got over from Garneau’s.”

Again and again, and with increasing rage, Kalman sought to drag Mackenzie away from his bottle and to his work.  By the time the bottle was done Mackenzie was once more helpless.