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uncommonly ill-dressed race of mortals.

The men were clothed partly in deer-skin, partly in coarse cloth, and
these garments were reduced by long service to a uniform dirty-brown
colour. They showed signs of being slept in by night as well as worn by
day.

There was a schoolmaster amongst them. Only fancy, a Lapp schoolmaster,
four feet nine or ten inches high! Sam Sorrel took a sketch of this
gentleman on the spot, with his wife and child. What the schoolmaster
taught, or whom he taught, or when or where he taught, are questions to
which Fred could obtain no answer. To look at him, one would have
imagined that eating, sleeping, and herding reindeer were the only
lessons that he was able to teach. Yet it was found on inquiry that
some of them could read Norse; and Sam actually discovered an old man in
one of the huts poring over a New Testament in that language. There
seemed something strangely incongruous in all this. They were dirty and
uncouth; they had no houses, no tables or chairs, no civilised habits of
any kind; yet they could read, and they had a schoolmaster! A very
dirty one, to be sure, and not very deeply learned, I dare say; still a
dominie, without doubt. On the strength of their acquirements, Fred
presented the tribe with a Norse New Testament.

Besides being four feet ten, the schoolmaster was comical and quizzical.
He was evidently the wit of his tribe. His face was yellow and dirty;
his nose was short and red, in addition to which it was turned up at the
point; his eyes were small, and sloped downwards at the inner corners
towards the nose, like those of the Chinese. His dirty leathern tunic
was belted so low down, and his little legs were so short, that there
was considerably more of him above the belt than below it. On his head
he wore a cap, somewhat like that of a jockey in shape, and his lower
limbs were encased in tight but ill-fitting leggings. Altogether, this
man was the most disreputable-looking schoolmaster that was ever seen
either at home or abroad.

While both parties were making acquaintance with each other, the rain
fell more heavily.

"You'd better put up your umbrella, Bob Bowie," said Fred.

Bob, who had forgotten the umbrella, in consequence of being so much
taken up with the Lapps, at once put it up. Being extremely proud of
this curiosity, he was glad of the opportunity to display it. A shout
of surprise and delight greeted its appearance. It was clear