It was a quiet night in the Shovel¹. At the bar, which ranged along one side of the large chinked-log room, leaned half a dozen men, two of whom were discussing the relative merits of spruce-tea and lime-juice as remedies for scurvy². They argued with an air of depression and with intervals³ of morose⁴ silence. The other men scarcely heeded⁵ them. In a row, against the opposite wall, were the gambling⁶ games. The crap-table was deserted⁷. One lone⁸ man was playing at the faro-table. The roulette-ball was not even spinning, and the gamekeeper stood by the roaring, red-hot stove, talking with the young, dark-eyed woman, comely⁹ of face and figure, who was known from Juneau to Fort Yukon as the Virgin¹⁰. Three men sat in at stud-poker, but they played with small chips and without enthusiasm, while there were no onlookers¹¹. On the floor of the dancing-room, which opened out at the rear, three couples were waltzing drearily¹² to the strains of a violin and a piano.