"You and the others would take more interest in the subject," said the
Boy a little hotly, "if we hadn't let you fellows use nearly all the
boat-planks for _your_ bunks, and now we haven't got any for our own."

"_Let_ us use 'em! Faith! we had a right to'm."

"To boards out of _our_ boat!"

"And ye can have the loan o' the whip-saw to make more, whenever the
fancy takes ye."

"Loan o' the whip-saw! Why, it's mine," says the Colonel.

"Divil a bit of it, man!" says O'Flynn serenely. "Everything we've got
belongs to all of us, except a sack o' coffee, a medicine-chest, and a
dimmi-john. And it's mesilf that's afraid the dimmi-john--"

"What's the use of my having bought a whip-saw?" interrupted the
Colonel, hurriedly. "What's the good of it, if the only man that knows
how to use it--"

"Is more taken up wid bein' a guardjin angel to his pardner's
dimmi-john--"

The Colonel turned and frowned at the proprietor of the dimmi-john. The
Boy had dropped behind to look at some marten tracks in the
fresh-fallen snow.

"I'll follow that trail after dinner," says he, catching up the others
in time to hear O'Flynn say: