eir sudden liberation, and the resulting destruction
of dismal darkness.

Our snow-abyss was no longer black and tomb-like. Its walls sparkled as
though encrusted with diamonds; its carpet of pine-branches shone
vividly green; the tree-stems around rose up like red-hot pillars, more
or less intense in colour, according to distance; the branching canopy
overhead appeared to become solid with light, and the distance around
equally solid with ebony blackness, while we, who had caused the
transformation, stood in the midst of the ruddy blaze like jovial
red-hot men!

"There's nothing like a fire," I remarked with some enthusiasm.

"Except supper," said Lumley.

"Gross creature!" I responded, as he went about the preparation of
supper with a degree of zest which caused me to feel that my epithet was
well deserved.

"Gross creature!" he repeated some time afterwards with a pleasant smile
of intense enjoyment, as he sat in front of the blaze sipping a can of
hot tea, and devouring pemmican and biscuit with avidity. "No, Max, I
am not a gross creature. Your intellects are probably benumbed by the
cold. If phrenologists are right in dividing the human brain into
compartments, wherein the different intellectual powers are said to be
located, I should think that some of those chambers lying nearest to the
top of the skull are apt to freeze at a temperature of forty below zero,
in which case the perfect working of the half-paralysed machine can
scarcely be looked for. Hold your head to the fire, and thaw it while I
expound this to you."

"Stay," said I, holding out my tin pannikin for more tea; "inward heat
as well as outward is necessary to my thorough comprehension of _your_
expositions."

"True, Max, all the faculties of such mind as you possess, in their most
active condition, are required to enable you to take in the simplest
proposition. Just give my bird a turn, like a good fellow."

He referred to a ptarmigan which, plucked, split open, roughly cleaned,
and impaled on a stick, was roasting in front of the fire. I turned his
bird and my own, while he continued:--

"To gratify the appetite with thorough and hearty appreciation after
working hard for your food, or walking far to find it, is not gross.
Grossness consists in eating heavily when you have not toiled, and
stimulating with fire-water, pepper, or mustard, your sluggish appetite.
To call me a gross creature, then--"

He stopped short, and, looking