om Canada, and in them an assortment of raw material
for the service in the shape of four or five green young men.

The clerks' house now became crammed. The quiet, elderly folks, who had
continued to fret at its noisy occupants, fled in despair to another
house, and thereby left room for the newcomers--or greenhorns, as they
were elegantly styled by their more knowing fellow-clerks. Now, indeed,
the corner of the fort in which we lived was avoided by all quiet people
as if it were smitten with the plague; while the loud laugh, uproarious
song, and sounds of the screeching flute or scraping fiddle, issued from
the open doors and windows, frightening away the very mosquitoes, and
making roof and rafters ring. Suddenly a dead silence would ensue; and
then it was conjectured by the knowing ones of the place that Mr Polly
was _coming out strong_ for the benefit of the new arrivals. Mr Polly
had a pleasant way of getting the green ones round him, and, by
detailing some of the wild scenes and incidents of his voyages in the
Saskatchewan, of leading them on from truth to exaggeration, and from
that to fanciful composition, wherein he would detail, with painful
minuteness, all the horrors of Indian warfare, and the improbability of
any one who entered those dreadful regions ever returning alive.

Norway House was now indeed in full blow, and many a happy hour did I
spend upon one of the clerks' beds--every inch of which was generally
occupied--listening to the story or the song. The young men there
assembled had arrived from the distant quarters of America, and some of
them even from England. Some were in the prime of manhood, and had
spent many years in the Indian country; some were beginning to scrape
the down from their still soft chins; while others were boys of
fourteen, who had just left home, and were listening for the first time,
open-mouthed, to their seniors' description of life in the wilderness.

Alas, how soon were those happy, careless young fellows to separate, and
how little probability was there of their ever meeting again! A sort of
friendship had sprung up among three of us. Many a happy hour had we
spent in rambling among the groves and woods of Norway House: now
ranging about in search of wild pigeons, anon splashing and tumbling in
the clear waters of the lake, or rowing over its surface in a light
canoe; while our inexperienced voices filled the woods with snatches of
the wild yet plaintive songs