some extent by several scarlet sashes, bright-coloured shot-belts,
and gay portions of winter costume peculiar to the country, which
depended from sundry nails in the bedroom walls; and as the three
doors always stood open, these objects, together with one or two
fowling-pieces and canoe-paddles, formed quite a brilliant and highly
suggestive background to the otherwise sombre picture. A large open
fireplace stood in one corner of the room, devoid of a grate, and so
constructed that large logs of wood might be piled up on end to any
extent. And really the fires made in this manner, and in this
individual fireplace, were exquisite beyond description. A wood-fire
is a particularly cheerful thing. Those who have never seen one can
form but a faint idea of its splendour; especially on a sharp winter
night in the arctic regions, where the thermometer falls to forty
degrees below zero, without inducing the inhabitants to suppose that
the world has reached its conclusion. The billets are usually piled
up on end, so that the flames rise and twine round them with a fierce
intensity that causes them to crack and sputter cheerfully, sending
innumerable sparks of fire into the room, and throwing out a rich
glow of brilliant light that warms a man even to look at it, and
renders candles quite unnecessary.

The clerks who inhabited this counting-room were, like itself,
peculiar. There were three--corresponding to the bedrooms. The senior
was a tall, broad-shouldered, muscular man--a Scotchman--very good-
humoured, yet a man whose under lip met the upper with that peculiar
degree of precision that indicated the presence of other qualities
besides that of good-humour. He was book-keeper and accountant, and
managed the affairs intrusted to his care with the same dogged
perseverance with which he would have led an expedition of discovery
to the North Pole. He was thirty or thereabouts.