fog before it with clouds of fine drifting snow, I was glad to get under
the lee of the providential wall, in the hospitable shelter of which,
before two minutes had elapsed, "Stephano, my drunken butler," was snoring
away like a phalanx of bullfrogs, with his head bolstered up somehow
between the great moose-horns, and his brawny limbs rolled carelessly in
the warm but somewhat unsavory skin of the dead monarch of the forest. I
gloried in his calm repose; for the day was yet young, and I flattered
myself that a three-hours' snooze would restore his muddled intellects to
their normal mediocrity of useful instinct, and that I might still achieve
my triumphal entry into the city,--a procession I had been so much in the
habit of picturing to myself over the nocturnal camp-fire, that it had
become a sort of nightmare with me. Indeed, I had idealized it roughly in
my pocket-book, intending to transfer the sketches, for elaboration on
canvas, to Tankerville, the regimental Landseer, whose menagerie of living
models, consisting of two bears, one calf-moose, one _loup-cervier_, three
bloated raccoons, and a bald eagle, formed at once the terror and delight
of the rising generation of the barracks.

Having got up a small fire with the assistance of the chips and scraps of
wood that were plentifully scattered around, I placed my snow-shoes one on
top of the other, and sat down on them,--a sort of preparatory step in my
transition to civilization, for they had somewhat the effect of a cane-
bottomed chair minus the legs and without a back. Then I filled my short
black pipe from the seal-skin tobacco-pouch, the contents of which had so
often assuaged my troubled spirit when I brooded over griefs which _then_
were immature, if not imaginary. It was a very pleasant smoke, I
recollect,--so pleasant, that I rather congratulated myself upon my
position; the only drawback to it being that I was shut out from a view of
the town, as the wind and drift rendered it indispensable for comfort in
smoking that I should keep strictly to leeward of my bulwark. Tobacco is