he fire, "especially at this season of the year,
when the sharp nights render the fire so agreeable."

"Yes," said Lumley, "and the sharp appetites render food so delightful."

"To say nothing," I added, "of the sharp wits that render intercourse so
pleasant."

"Ah, and not to mention," retorted Lumley, "the dull wits, stirred into
unwonted activity, which tone down that intercourse with flashes of
weakly humour. Now then, Max, clap on more wood. Don't spare the
firing--there's plenty of it, so--isn't it grand to see the thick smoke
towering upwards straight and solid like a pillar!"

"Seldom that one experiences a calm so perfect," said I, glancing upward
at the slowly-rising smoke. "Don't you think it is the proverbial calm
before the storm?"

"Don't know, Max. I'm not weather-wise. Can't say that I understand
much about calms or storms, proverbial or otherwise, and don't much
care."

"That's not like your usual philosophical character, Lumley," said
I--"see, the column is still quite perpendicular--"

"Come, Max," interrupted my friend, "don't get sentimental till after
supper. Go to work, and pluck that bird while I fill the kettle."

"If anything can drive away sentiment," I replied, taking up one of the
birds which we had shot that day, "the plucking and cleaning of this
will do it."

"On the contrary, man," returned Lumley, taking up the tin kettle as he
spoke, "true sentiment, if you had it, would induce you to moralise on
that bird as you plucked it--on the romantic commencement of its career
amid the reeds and sedges of the swamps in the great Nor'-west; on the
bold flights of its maturer years over the northern wilderness into
those mysterious regions round the pole, which man, with all his vaunted
power and wisdom, has failed to fathom, and on the sad--I may even say
inglorious--termination of its course in a hunter's pot, to say nothing
of a hunter's stom--"

"Lumley," said I, interrupting, "do try to hold your tongue, if you can,
and go fill your kettle."

With a laugh he swung off to a spring that bubbled at the foot of a rock
hard by, and when he returned I had my bird plucked, singed, split open,
and cleaned out. You must understand, reader, that we were not
particular. We were wont to grasp the feathers in large handfuls, and
such as would not come off easily we singed off.

"You see, Lumley," said I, when he came back, "I don't intend that this
bird shall end his career in the p