of the bay. Just strive and keep up for a few minutes longer, Innes, and we shall get over this night with all the rest."

The sledge reached the promontory, and entered the wood. It was thick and dark; and there was a rustling and crackling on every side, as the dogs went bounding among the underwood—their ears and tails erected, and opening from time to time in quick, sharp barkings, sure indications that they deemed themselves near the close of their journey. The trees began to open; and, descending an abrupt ice declivity, the travellers found themselves on the edge of a narrow creek, that went winding into the interior, between steep banks laden with huge piles of snow, which, hollowed by the blast into a thousand fantastic forms, hung bellying over the level. A log-house, buried half-way to the eaves in front, and overtopped by an immense wreath behind—resembling some hapless vessel in the act of foundering—occupied an inflection of the bank opposite the promontory; and in a few minutes the travellers had crossed the creek, and stood fronting the door.

"Ah, no kindly smoke comes frae the lum, Innes," said Sandy, leaping out of the car; "all dark, too, as midnight at Yule; but we maun just bestir ourselves, and get up a blaze. Do exert yourself, my bonny man, or we shall perish yet. Unfasten the dogs, and be sure you hang up the harness out of their reach, or the puir hungry wratches will eat it up, every snap, afore morning. Unfasten the door, too, and get out our driest skins and driest tinder; and I, meanwhile, shall provide you with brushwood aneugh to keep up a bonfire till morning."

He seized an axe, and began to ply lustily among the underwood; while his neighbour unharnessed the dogs, and, clearing the door, entered the log-house, which soon began to throw up a thick steam through the snow. We shall take the liberty of following him. The apartment was about ten feet square; the walls formed of undressed logs, and the roof of shingles. The snow peeped in a hundred different places through the interstices; and a multitude of huge icicles, the effects of a late partial thaw, hung half-way down from the ceiling to the floor, and now glistened in the light, as the flames rose gaily on the hearth. The dogs were whining and pawing in a corner, impatient for their evening repast. In a few minutes Sandy had half-filled the apartment with brushwood, and then set himself to assist his companion, who seemed but indifferently skilled in the culinary art, in preparing supper, which consisted mostly of frozen fish and biscuit, relished by a dram of excellent rum. It was soon smoking on the floor, and, with the assistance of the dogs, soon discussed; and the two fur-gatherers sat indulging in the genial heat, with the long dark evening before them, and neither of them in the least disposed to retire to the bed of brushwood and skins which they had formed on the floor, immediately behind them.

"We are strange, changeable creatures," said Sandy—"the bairn sticks to us a' life lang; and, if we dinna laugh, and cry just in the ae breath, it's no that the feelings dinna vary, but that the pride o' consistency winna always let us show what we feel. Little mair nor an hour ago, we were baith perishin in the bitter cauld, half resigned to die, that we might escape frae our misery, and noo here we are as happy as if there were no such things as death or hardship i' the warld. Man, what a bonny fire! I could maist forget that I was a puir Hudson's Bay fur-gatherer, and that kindly Scotland was four thousand miles awa."

"What," said his companion, "could have induced a steady, sensible fellow like you, Sandy, to indenture with the company? 'Tis easy to divine what brought most of our comrades here—they resemble David's associates in the Cave of Adullam; but you, who could have been neither in debt nor distress, and who are always so much the reverse of discontented—I could never guess what brought you. Come, now, let us have your story; the night is long and tedious, and I know not how we could pass it to better purpose."

"But I do," replied Sandy. "My story is nae story ava. I am but a rude man amang rude men like mysel; but you, Innes, what could hae brought you here? You are a gentleman and a scholar, though ye hae but sma' skill, maybe, in niffering brandy and glass beads for the skins o' foumarts; and your story, no a vera gay one, I fear, will hae a' the interest o' an auld ballad. It's but fair, however, that ye should hae mine, such as it is, first. But draw just a wee bittie out o' the draught; for there's a cauld, bitter wind soughin ben frae the door—and only hear how the storm rages arout!

"There's a curious prejudice," continued Sandy, "among our country folks—and, I suppose, among the folks o' every other country besides—against some particular handicrafts. It's foolish in maist cases. The souters o' Selkirk were gallant fellows; and, had a' our Scottish knights fought half as weel at Flodden, our country would hae lost a battle less; and yet ye canna but ken how our auld poets o' the time—Dunbar, and Kennedy, and Davie Lindsay—ridicule the puir souters. They say that, once on a time, the vera deil himsel wadna keep company wi' ane o' them, till he had first got the puir man to wash himsel. Now, the prejudice against tailors is hardly less strong in our ain days; and yet a tailor may be a stalwart fellow, and bear a manly heart. I'm no sure, had it no been for this prejudice, that I would now hae been a fur-gatherer on the shores o' Hudson's Bay."

"Would to heaven," exclaimed his companion, interrupting him, "that I had been bred a tailor! I'm mistaken if any such prejudice would have sent me across the Atlantic."

"We can be a' wise enough on our neebor's weaknesses, Innes," said Sandy; "but to the story.

"I come frae a seaport town in the north o' Scotland, no twenty miles frae Inverness, your ain bonny half-Hieland, half-Lowland home. My father, who had married late in life, was an old grey-headed man from the time I first remember him. He had a sma' family; and, in his anxiety to see us a' doing for oursels, I was apprenticed to a tailor in my tenth year. Weel do I mind wi' what a disconsolate feeling I left the twa cows I used to herd on a bonny brae-side speckled wi' gowans and buttercups, to be crumpled down on the corner o' a board hardly bigger than an apron, amang shreds and patches o' a' the colours o' the rainbow, wi' an outlook through a dusty window on the side wa's o' an auld warehouse. And then my comrades were such queer fallows, fu o' a droll, little, wee sort o' conceit, that could ride on the neck o' a new button, and a warld o' fashious bits o' tricks, naething sae guid as the tricks o' a jackanapes, but every grain as wicked; and aften hae they played them aff on the puir simple laddie. There are nane o' our craftsfolks, Innes, but hae some peculiarity to mark them that grows up oot o' their profession; and there's nae class mair marked than the class I belong to."

"I have read Lamb on the Melancholy of Tailors," said Innes, "and remember laughing heartily at the quaint humour of some of his remarks; but I never wasted a thought on the subject after laying him down."

"Ah, Lamb, wi' a' his bonny, bairn-like humour and simplicity," said Sandy, "is but a Cockney feelosopher after a', and kent naething o' the matter. Melancholy o' tailors, forsooth! Why, man, a Hieland tailor is aye the heartiest cock, and has aye the maist auld stories i' the parish. But I maun gie you the feelosophy o' the thing at some ither time.—I got on but ill wi' my companions," continued Sandy; "and the royitous laddies outside used to jibe me wi' no being a man sax years afore I ceased being a boy. Is it no hard that tailors should lose the reputation o' manhood through a stupid misconception o' the sense o' an auld-warld author? He tells us the tailor canna mak a man, just in the spirit that Burns tells us a king canna mak an honest man. And, instead o' the pith o' the remark being brought to bear on the beau and the coxcomb, wha never