Jerry diverted his fury to this intermediary.  “Is that so?” he mocked.  “Well, let ’em laugh; it’ll do ’em good.  You’re a nice woman, but this ain’t ladies’ day at our club and we don’t need no outside advice on how to run our party.”

“Oh, very well!” The Countess shrugged and turned away, motioning Pierce to follow her.  “Fight it out to suit yourselves.”

Quirk muttered something about the insolence of strangers; then he picked up his saw.  In silence the work was resumed, and later, when the boat had been divided, each man set about boarding up and calking the open end of his respective half.  Neither of them was expert in the use of carpenter’s tools, therefore it was supper-time before they finished, and the result of their labor was nothing to be proud of.  Each now possessed a craft that would float, no doubt, but which in few other respects resembled a boat; Linton’s was a slim, square-ended wedge, while Quirk’s was a blunt barge, fashioned on the lines of a watering-trough.  They eyed the freaks with some dismay, but neither voiced the slightest regret nor acknowledged anything but supreme satisfaction.

Without a word they gathered up their tools and separated to prepare their evening meals.  Linton entered his tent, now empty, cold, and cheerless; Quirk set up his stove in the open and rigged a clumsy shelter out of a small tarpaulin.  Under this he spread his share of the bedding.  Engaged in this, he realized that his two blankets promised to be woefully inadequate to the weather and he cocked an apprehensive eye heavenward.  What he saw did not reassure him, for the evening sky was overcast and a cold, fitful wind blew from off the lake.  There was no doubt about it, it looked like rain—­or snow—­perhaps a combination of both.  Mr. Quirk felt a shiver of dread run through him, and his heart sank at the prospect of many nights like this to come.  He derived some scanty comfort from the sight of old Tom puttering wearily around a camp-fire, the smoke from which followed him persistently, bringing tears to his smarting eyes and strangling complaints from his lungs.

“He’s tryin’ to burn green wood,” Jerry said, aloud, “the old fool!”

A similar epithet was upon his former partner’s tongue.  Linton was saying to himself, “Old Jerry’s enjoying life now, but wait till his fire goes out and it starts to rain.”

He chuckled maliciously and then rehearsed a speech of curt refusal for use when Quirk came to the tent and begged shelter from the weather.  There would be nothing doing, Tom made up his mind to that; he tried several insults under his breath, then he offered up a vindictive prayer for rain, hail, sleet, and snow.  A howling Dakota blizzard, he decided, would exactly suit him.  He was a bit rusty on prayers, but whatever his appeal may have lacked in polish it made up in earnestness, for never did petition carry aloft a greater weight of yearning than did his.