shoes and medicines. You would have to be very ingenious to ask
for a thing which Henning could not supply. The smell in the
store carried out the same idea; for it was a mixture of all
imaginable smells under the sun.

Now, it was the chief misery of Marcus that, sleeping, as he did,
in the room behind the store, he had become so impregnated with
this curious composite smell that it followed him like an
odoriferous halo, and procured him a number of unpleasant
nicknames. The principal ingredient was salted herring; but
there was also a suspicion of tarred ropes, plug tobacco, prunes,
dried codfish, and oiled tarpaulin.

It was not so much kindness of heart as respect for his own
dignity which made Viggo refrain from calling Marcus a "Muskrat"
or a "Smelling-Bottle." And yet Marcus regarded this gracious
forbearance on his part as the mark of a noble soul. He had been
compelled to accept these offensive nicknames, and, finding
rebellion vain, he had finally acquiesced in them.

He never loved to be called a "Muskrat," though he answered to
the name mechanically. But when Viggo addressed him as "base
minion," in his wrath, or as "Sergeant Henning," in his sunnier
moods, Marcus felt equally complimented by both terms, and vowed
in his grateful soul eternal allegiance and loyalty to his chief.

He bore kicks and cuffs with the same admirable equanimity; never
complained when he was thrown into a dungeon in a deserted pigsty
for breaches of discipline of which he was entirely guiltless,
and trudged uncomplainingly through rain and sleet and snow, as