stick and rust until you starve or drown! Here you are,--two men who
ought to be out in the world, playing your part as grown men,--stuck
here like children 'playing house' in the woods; playing work in your
wretched mud-pie ditches, and content. Two men not so old that you
mightn't be taking your part in the fun of the world, going to balls
or theatres, or paying attention to girls, and yet old enough to have
married and have your families around you, content to stay in this
God-forsaken place; old bachelors, pigging together like poorhouse
paupers. That's what gets me! Say you LIKE it? Say you expect by
hanging on to make a strike--and what does that amount to? What are YOUR
chances? How many of us have made, or are making, more than grub wages?
Say you're willing to share and share alike as you do--have you got
enough for two? Aren't you actually living off each other? Aren't you
grinding each other down, choking each other's struggles, as you sink
together deeper and deeper in the mud of this cussed camp? And while
you're doing this, aren't you, by your age and position here, holding
out hopes to others that you know cannot be fulfilled?"

Accustomed as they were to the half-querulous, half-humorous, but always
extravagant, criticism of the others, there was something so new in this
arraignment of themselves that the partners for a moment sat silent.
There was a slight flush on Uncle Billy's cheek, there was a slight
paleness on Uncle Jim's. He was the first to reply. But he did so with a
certain dignity which neither his partner nor their guest had ever seen
on his face before.

"As it's OUR fire that's warmed ye up like this, Dick Bullen," he said,
slowly rising, with his hand resting on Uncle Billy's shoulder, "and as
it's OUR whiskey that's loosened your tongue, I reckon we must put up
with what ye 'r' saying, just as we've managed to put up with our own