These wings were connected by two covered galleries, one above the
other, with stairs at each end.

Curiously enough, these galleries did not face the sea, that is,
the south, but the fields and woods to the north. The portion of
the house between the two wings was a neutral territory--namely, a
large dining-room with a ballroom above it, neither of which was
used in later years.

Harald Kaas's suite of rooms was distinguished from without by a
mighty elk's head with its enormous antlers, which was set up over
the gallery.

In the gallery itself were heads of bear, wolf, fox and lynx, with
stuffed birds from land and sea. Skins and guns hung on the walls
of the anteroom, the inner rooms were also full of skins and
impregnated with the smell of wild animals and tobacco-smoke.
Harald himself called it "Man-smell;" no one who had once put his
nose inside could ever forget it.

Valuable and beautiful skins hung on the walls and covered the
floors; his very bed was nothing else; Harald Kaas lay, and sat,
and walked on skins, and each one of them was a welcome subject of
conversation, for he had shot and flayed every single animal
himself. To be sure, there were those who hinted that most of the
skins had been bought from Brand and Company, of Bergen, and that
only the stories were shot and flayed at home.

I for my part think that this was an exaggeration; but be that as