"What have you got to show for it?" she flamed on. "Listen!"

From within, through the open window, came the tinkling of Tom's
_ukulele_ and the rollicking lilt of his voice in an Hawaiian _hula_. It
ended in a throbbing, primitive love-call from the sensuous tropic night
that no one could mistake. There was a burst of young voices, and a
clamour for more. Frederick did not speak. He had sensed something vague
and significant.

Turning, he glanced through the window at Tom, flushed and royal,
surrounded by the young men and women, under his Viking moustache
lighting a cigarette from a match held to him by one of the girls. It
abruptly struck Frederick that never had he lighted a cigar at a match
held in a woman's hand.

"Doctor Tyler says he oughtn't to smoke--it only aggravates," he said;
and it was all he could say.

As the fall of the year came on, a new type of men began to frequent the
house. They proudly called themselves "sour-doughs," and they were
arriving in San Francisco on the winter's furlough from the
gold-diggings of Alaska. More and more of them came, and they pre-empted
a large portion of one of the down-town hotels. Captain Tom was fading
with the season, and almost lived in the big chair. He drowsed oftener
and longer, but whenever he awoke he was surrounded by his court of
young people, or there was some comrade waiting to sit and yarn about
the old gold days and plan for the new gold days.

For Tom--Husky Travers, the Yukoners named him--never thought that the
end approached. A temporary illness, he called it, the natural