What business had George to upset him like that?
He was down enough on his luck as it was.
He smoked away, gloomily thinking over the conversation.

It didn't look like getting any money out of this close-fisted Puritanical son of his.
Survey indeed! McEwen found himself shaken by a kind of internal convulsion as he thought of the revelations that would come out.

George was a fool.
In his feverish reverie, many lines of thought crossed and danced in his brain; and every now and then he was tormented by the craving for alcohol.

The Salvation Army proposal half amused, half infuriated him.
He knew all about their colonies.

Trust him! Your own master for seventeen years--mixed up in a lot of jobs it wouldn't do to go blabbing to the Mounted Police--and then to finish up with those hymn-singing fellows!--George was most certainly a fool! Yet dollars ought to be screwed out of him--somehow.
Presently, to get rid of some unpleasant reflections, the old man stretched out his hand for a copy of the _Vancouver Sentinel_ that was lying on the bed, and began to read it idly.