uppressed laughter; while poor Crusty, who
slipped his foot in rapidly descending from his chair, lay sprawling in
an ocean of water, which he had upset upon himself in his fall.

Mr Grave merely went to Mr Wilson's room to ask a few questions, and
then departed as if he had seen nothing; but a peculiar twist in the
corners of his mouth, and a comical twinkle in his eye, showed that,
although he said nothing, he had a pretty good guess that his "young
men" had been engaged in mischief!

Such were the companions to whom I introduced myself shortly after; and,
while they went off to the office, I amused myself in looking round the
rooms in which I was to spend the approaching winter.

The house was only one story high, and the greater part of the interior
formed a large hall, from which several doors led into the sleeping
apartments of the clerks. The whole was built of wood; and few houses
could be found wherein so little attention was paid to ornament or
luxury. The walls were originally painted white, but this, from long
exposure to the influence of a large stove, had changed to a dirty
yellow. No carpet covered the floor; nevertheless, its yellow planks
had a cheerful appearance; and gazing at the numerous knots with which
it was covered often afforded me a dreamy kind of amusement when I had
nothing better to do. A large oblong iron box, on four crooked legs,
with a funnel running from it through the roof, stood exactly in the
middle of the room; this was a stove, but the empty wood-box in the
corner showed that its services were not required at that time. And
truly they were not; for it was the height of summer, and the whole room
was filled with mosquitoes and bull-dog flies, which kept up a perpetual
hum night and day. The only furniture that graced the room consisted of
two small unpainted deal tables without tablecloths, five whole wooden
chairs, and a broken one--which latter, being light and handy, was
occasionally used as a missile by the young men when they happened to
quarrel. Several guns and fishing-rods stood in the corners of the
hall, but their dirty appearance proclaimed that sporting, at that time,
was not the order of the day. The tables were covered with a
miscellaneous collection of articles; and from a number of pipes
reposing on little odoriferous heaps of cut tobacco, I inferred that my
future companions were great smokers. Two or three books, a pair of
broken foils, a battered mask,