“I don’t think much of them,” replied Hamilton, softly, and with a slight smile; “I only meant that such a walk was not very attractive so late in the evening.”
“Attractive!” shouted Harry Somerville from his bedroom, where he was equipping himself for the walk; “what can be more attractive than a sharp run of ten miles through the woods on a cool night to visit your traps, with the prospect of a silver fox or a wolf at the end of it, and an extra sound sleep as the result? Come, man, don’t be soft; get ready, and go along with us.”
“Besides,” added the accountant, “I don’t mean to come back to-night. To-morrow, you know, is a holiday, so we can camp out in the snow after visiting the traps, have our supper, and start early in the morning to search for ptarmigan.”
“Well, I will go,” said Hamilton, after this account of the pleasures that were to be expected; “I am exceedingly anxious to learn to shoot birds on the wing.”
“Bless me! have you not learned that yet?” asked the doctor, in affected surprise, as he sauntered out of his bedroom to relight his pipe.
The various bedrooms in the clerks’ house were ranged round the hall, having doors that opened directly into it, so that conversation carried on in a loud voice was heard in all the rooms at once, and was not unfrequently sustained in elevated tones from different apartments, when the occupants were lounging, as they often did of an evening, in their beds.
“No,” said Hamilton, in reply to the doctor’s question, “I have not learned yet, although there were a great many grouse in the part of Scotland where I was brought up. But my aunt, with whom I lived, was so fearful of my shooting either myself or some one else, and had such an aversion to firearms, that I determined to make her mind easy, by promising that I would never use them so long as I remained under her roof.”
“Quite right; very dutiful and proper,” said the doctor, with a grave, patronising air.
“Perhaps you’ll fall in with more fox tracks of the same sort as the one you gave chase to this morning,” shouted the skipper, from Wilson’s room.
“Oh! there’s hundreds of them out there,” said the accountant; “so let’s off at once.”