"You shall not swear my life away in such fashion! To bring a
madman, whom I have only met once in my life, to testify as to my
character!"
The pocket-miner turned to him. "So you don't know me, eh, Gregory St.
Vincent?"
"No," St. Vincent replied, coldly, "I do not know you, my man."
"Don't you man me!" Del shouted, hotly.
But St. Vincent ignored him, turning to the crowd.
"I never saw the fellow but once before, and then for a few brief
moments in Dawson."
"You'll remember before I'm done," Del sneered; "so hold your hush and
let me say my little say. I come into the country with him way back in
'84."
St. Vincent regarded him with sudden interest.
"Yep, Mr. Gregory St. Vincent. I see you begin to recollect. I
sported whiskers and my name was Brown, Joe Brown, in them days."
He grinned vindictively, and the correspondent seemed to lose all
interest.
"Is it true, Gregory?" Frona whispered.
"I begin to recognize," he muttered, slowly. "I don't know . . . no,
folly! The man must have died."
"You say in '84, Mr. Bishop?" Bill Brown prompted.
"Yep, in '84. He was a newspaper-man, bound round the world by way of
Alaska and Siberia. I'd run away from a whaler at Sitka,--that squares
it with Brown,--and I engaged with him for forty a month and found.
Well, he quarrelled with me--"
A snicker, beginning from nowhere in particular, but passing on from
man to man and swelling in volume, greeted this statement.
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