ore, but soon joined the
rest of the family in the realms of oblivion.

CHAPTER THREE.

OUR HERO AND HIS FRIENDS BECOME FAMILIAR.

It was a fine balmy brilliant morning when Red Rooney awoke from the
most refreshing sleep he had enjoyed for many a day, gazed thoughtfully
up at the blackened roof of the Eskimo hut, and wondered where he was.

There was nothing that met his eyes to recall his scattered senses, for
all the members of the family had gone out to their various avocations,
and one of them having thrust a sealskin into the hole in the wall which
served for a window the sun found admittance only through crevices, and
but faintly illumined the interior.

The poor man felt intensely weak, yet delightfully restful--so much so
that mere curiosity seemed to have died within him, and he was content
to lie still and think of whatever his wayward mind chose to fasten on,
or not to think at all, if his mind saw fit to adopt that course in its
vagaries. In short, he felt as if he had no more control over his
thoughts than a man in a dream, and was quite satisfied that it should
be so.

As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, however, he began slowly
to perceive that the walls around him were made of rough unhewn stone,
that the rafters were of drift timber, and the roof of moss, or
something like it; but the whole was so thickly coated with soot as to
present a uniform appearance of blackness. He also saw, from the
position in which he lay, a stone vessel, like a primitive classical
lamp, with a wick projecting from its lip, but no flame. Several skulls
of large animals lay on the floor within the range of his vision, and
some sealskin and other garments hung on pegs of bone driven into the
wall. Just opposite to him was the entrance to the tunnel, which formed
the passage or corridor of the mansion, and within it gleamed a subdued
light which entered from the outer end.

Rooney knew that he saw these things, and took note of them, yet if you
had asked him what he had seen it is probable that he would have been
unable to tell--so near had he approached to the confines of that land
from which no traveller returns.

Heaving a deep sigh, the man uttered the words, "Thank God!" for the
third time within the last four-and-twenty hours. It was an appropriate
prelude to his sinking into that mysterious region of oblivion in which
the mind of worn-out man finds rest, and out of which it can be so
famili