the gorge, covered us with snow-drift, and sought to freeze the very marrow in our bones, the temperature having again fallen considerably.

That night is imprinted indelibly upon my memory: never do I recal its tardily passing moments without shuddering at the thought of what might have been our state next morning. That we were not all frozen to death will ever be a matter of wonder to me, for our under garments had been completely saturated with melted snow, and our outer dresses were rigid as boards. The morning of the 14th presented little to justify more than a faint hope of relief. A heavy mist hung around, obscuring the scene as much as ever; and although we journeyed on, it was in a circle, for we crossed our old track. Between nine and ten, however, the mist cleared off, and gave us a considerable view, by which fortunate chance both Martin and Mooldooyah recognised a headland afar, and then knew that we were in Oong-wy-sac Čoy-ee-mak, or Oongwysac harbour, and consequently could reach the village of Oongwysac ere night. We directly took bearings, in case the weather should again thicken, but it cleared as the day wore on; and using all the very moderate despatch we could exert, Oongwysac was reached after a laborious travel of ten hours. We arrived at the yarangas in a condition of complete exhaustion; and here our first cry was for water. For water! with snow in such profusion around! Even so, good friends. Thirst was one of our greatest sufferings, which eating snow only increased, from its inflammatory effect. Our poor dogs were almost famished.

The okonch of the natives is invaluable as a protection against snow. It is made of the intestines of whales and other marine animals, slit open and sewn very neatly together on a double edge. This species of shirt is, when good, quite impervious to water, and exceedingly light, weighing only a few ounces. It is manifest what a boon such a protection must be in snow, particularly heavy drift, the fine particles of which will penetrate into the smallest crevice, and so completely fill the hair of this dress that its weight becomes unbearable.

We have limited ourselves in this notice to the Tuski and their tents, as the more novel subject; but Mr. Hooper's work contains also a very interesting narrative of a boat expedition along the Arctic shores of North America; of interviews with Esquimaux by no means of so pleasant a character as those with the Tuski; of an ascent up the Mackenzie and Peel Rivers, and of winterings at the forts of the Hudson Bay Company; which narrative is further enlivened by sundry tales of starvation in those desolate regions of a truly appalling character, comprehending as they do notices of an old Indian who devoured eleven or thirteen persons, among whom (charity begins at home) were his parents, one wife, and the children of two; and another rather worked-up story of an European who perished from a surfeit over the liver of his friend in distress. These painful episodes of Arctic wintering are further diversified by accounts of cowardly fights between the Indians and the Esquimaux. Both narratives are illustrated by a map, in which Mr. Hooper carries out Wrangell's land to Wollaston's a totally improbable view of the case and by several prettily tinted lithographs, which give a good idea of the tents of the Tuski, of their interiors, and of the people themselves; as also by a very animated picture of the winter-quarters of the Plover in the same regions, and a characteristic view of Cape Bathurst, with Esquimaux, tents, and boats, and of the ice pressing down on that most remote and inhospitable shore.

THE DOOMED HOUSE.

A TALE.

FROM THE DANISH OF B. S. INGEMANN.

BY MRS. BUSHBY.

"THE house near Christianshavn's canal is again for sale-your worthy uncle's house, Johanna! And now upon very reasonable terms," said the young joiner and cabinet-maker, Frants, one morning to his pretty wife, as he laid the advertisement sheet of the newspaper upon the cradle, and glanced at his little boy, an infant of about three months old, who was sleeping sweetly, and seemed to be sporting with heavenly cherubs in his innocent dreams.

"Let us on no account think of the dear old house,” replied his wife, taking up the newspaper and placing it on the table, without even looking at the advertisement. "We have a roof over our heads as long as Mr. Stork will have patience about the rent. If we have bread enough for ourselves, and for yon little angel, who will soon begin to want some, we may well rest contented. Notwithstanding our poverty, we are, perhaps, the happiest married couple in the whole town," she added gently, and with an affectionate smile, "and we ought to thank our God that he did not let the wide world separate us from each other, but permitted you to return from your distant journey healthy and cheerful, and that he has granted us love and strength to bear our little cross with patience.'

"You are ever the same amiable and pious Johanna," said Frants, embracing the lovely young mother, who reminded him of an exquisite picture of the Madonna he had seen abroad, "and you have made me better and more patient than I was, either by nature or habit. But I really cannot remain longer in this miserable garret; I have neither room nor spirits to work here; and if I am to make anything by my handicraft, I must have a proper workshop and space to breathe and move in. Your good uncle's house, near the canal, is just the place for me; how many jovial songs my old master and I have sung there together over our joiner's bench! Ah! there I shall feel comfortable and at home. It was there, also, that I first saw you; there that I used to sit every evening with you in the nice little parlour with the cheerful green wainscoting, when I came from the workshop with old Mr. Flok. I remember how, on Sundays and on holidays, he used to take his silver goblet from the cupboard in the alcove, and drink with me in such a sociable way. And when my piece of trial-work as a journeyman was finished, and the large handsome coffin was put out in state in the workshop, do you remember how glad the old man was, and how you sank into my arms when he placed your hand in mine over the coffin, and said: 'Take her, Frants, and be worthy of her! My house shall be your home and hers, and everything it contains shall be your property when I am sleeping in this coffin, awaiting a blessed resurrection.'

"Ah! but all that never came to pass," sighed Johanna. "The coffin

lies empty up in yonder loft, and frightens children in the dark; the dear old house is under the ban of evil report, and no one will buy it, or even hire it now, so many strange, unfortunate deaths have taken place there."

"These very circumstances are in our favour, Johanna; on account of this state of things Mr. Stork will sell it a great bargain, and give a half-year's credit for the purchase-money. In the course of six months, surely, the long-protracted settlement of your uncle's affairs will be brought to a close, and we shall at least have as much as will pay what we owe. The house will then be our own, and you will see how happy and prosperous we shall be. Surely it is not the fault of the poor house that three children died there of measles, and two people of old age, in the course of a few months; and none but silly old women can be frightened because the idle children in the street choose to scratch upon the walls THE DOOMED HOUSE. The house is, and always will be, liked by me, and if Mr. Stork will accept of my offer for it, without any other security than my own word, that dwelling shall be mine to-day, and we can move into it to-morrow."

"Oh! my dear Frants! you cannot think how reluctant I am to increase our debt to this Mr. Stork; believe me, he is not a good man, however friendly and courteous he may seem to be. Even my uncle could not always tolerate him, though it was not in his nature to dislike any of God's creatures. Whenever Mr. Stork came and began to talk about business and bills, my uncle became silent and gloomy, and always gave me a wink to retire to my chamber."

"I knew very well Mr. Stork was looking after you then," said Frants, with a smile of self-satisfaction, "but I was a more fortunate suitor. It was a piece of folly on the part of the old bachelor; all that, however, is forgotten now, and he has transferred the regard he once had for you to me. He never duns me for my rent; he lent me money at the time of the child's baptism, and he shows me more kindness than any one else does."

"But I cannot endure the way in which he looks at me, Frants, and I put no faith either in his friendship or his rectitude. The very house that he is now about to sell he scarcely came so honestly by as he gives out; and I cannot understand how he has so large a claim upon the property my uncle left. I never heard my uncle speak of it. God only knows what will remain for us when all these heavy claims that have been brought forward are satisfied; yet my uncle was considered a rich man."

"The lawyers and the proper court must settle that," replied Frants. "I only know this, that I should be a fool if I did not buy the house now."

"But, to say the truth, dear Frants," urged Johanna, in a supplicating tone, "I am almost afraid to go back to that house, dear as every corner of it has been to me from my childhood. I cannot reconcile myself to the reality of the painful circumstances said to have attended my poor uncle's death. And whenever I pass over Long Bridge, and near the dead- house for the drowned, with its low windows, I always feel an irresistible impulse to look in and see if he is not there still, waiting to be placed in his proper coffin, and decently buried in a churchyard."

"Ah! your brain is conjuring up a parcel of old nursery tales, my Johanna! We have nothing to fear from your good, kind uncle. If,

indeed, his spirit could be near us here on earth, it would only bring us blessings and happiness. I am quite easy on that score; he was a pious, God-fearing man, and there was nothing in his life to disturb his repose after death. Report said that he had drowned himself; but I am quite convinced that was not true. If I had not unluckily been away on my travels as a journeyman, and you with your dying aunt-your mother's sister we would most likely have had him with us now. How often I have warned him against sailing about alone in Kalleboe Bay. But he would go every Sunday. As long as I was in his employ I always made a point of accompanying him; and when I went away, he promised me never to go without a boatman."

"It

"Alas! that was an unfortunate Christmas!" sighed Johanna. was not until he had been advertised in the newspapers as missing, and Mr. Stork had recognised his corpse at the dead-house for the drowned, and had caused him to be secretly buried as a suicide,-it was not until all this was over, that I knew he had not been put into his own coffin, and laid in consecrated ground."

"Let us not grieve longer, dear Johanna, for what it was not in our power to prevent. But let us rather, in respect to the memory of our kind benefactor, put the house which he occupied, and where he worked for us, in order, inhabit it cheerfully, and rescue it from mysterious accusations and evil reports. Our welfare was all he thought of and laboured for."

"As you will, then, dear Frants," said Johanna, yielding to his arguments. She hastened at the same moment to take up from its cradle the child who had just awoke, and holding it out to its young father, she added, "May God protect this innocent infant, and spare it to us!"

Frants kissed the mother and the child, smoothed his brown hair, and taking his hat down from its peg, he hurried off to conclude the purchase on which he had set his heart. He returned in great spirits; and the next day the little family removed to the house which had belonged to Mr. Flok. Frants was rejoiced to see his old master's furniture, which he had bought at an auction, restored to its former place; and he felt almost as if the easy-chair and the bureau, formerly in the immediate use of the old man, must share in his gladness.

But the baker's wife at the corner of the street shrugged her shoulders and pitied the handsome young couple, whom she considered doomed to sickness and misfortune, because five corpses within the last six months had been carried out of that house, and because there was an inscription on its walls, that, however often it had been effaced, had always re-appeared: "THE DOOMED HOUSE" stood there, written in red characters, and all the old crones in the neighbourhood affirmed that the words were written in blood.

"Mark my words," said the baker's wife at the corner of the street to her daughter, "before the year is at an end we shall have another coffin carried out of that house."

Frants the joiner had bestirred himself to set all to rights in the longneglected workshop, and Johanna had put the house in nice order, and arranged everything as it used to be in days gone by. The little parlour

with the green wainscoting, and the old-fashioned alcove, had its former chairs and tables replaced in it. The bureau occupied its ancient corner, and the easy-chair again stood near the stove, and seemed to await its master's return. Often, as the young couple sat together in the twilight, whilst the blaze of the fire in the stove cast a cheerful glare through its little grated door on the hearth beneath, they missed the old man, and talked of him with sadness and affection. But Johanna would some times glance timidly at the empty leather arm-chair; and when the moon shone in through the small window-panes, she would at times even fancy that she saw her uncle sitting there, but pale and bloody, and with dripping wet hair. She would then exclaim, "Let us have lights-the baby seems restless; I must see what is the matter with it."

One evening there were no candles down stairs-she had to go for them up to the storeroom in the garret. She lighted a small taper that was in the lantern, and went out of the room, while Frants rocked the infant's cradle to lull it to sleep. But she had only been a few minutes gone when he heard a noise as if of some one having fallen down in the loft above, and he also thought he heard Johanna scream. He quitted the cradle instantly, and rushing up-stairs after her he found her lying in a swoon near the coffin, with the lantern in her hand, though its light was extinguished. Exceedingly alarmed, he carried her down stairs, relighted the taper, and used every effort to recover her from her fainting fit. When she was better, and somewhat composed, he asked, in much anxiety, what had happened.

"Oh, I am as timid as a foolish child," said Johanna. "It was only my poor uncle's coffin up yonder that frightened me. I would have begged you to go and fetch the candles, but I was ashamed to own my silly fears, and when the current of air blew out the light in my lantern up there, it seemed to me as if a spectre's death-cold breathing passed over my face, and I fancied that I saw amidst the gloom the lid of the coffin rising-so I fainted away in my childish terror."

"That coffin shall not frighten you again," said Frants; "I will advertise it to-morrow for sale."

He did so, but ineffectually, for no one bought it. One day Mr. Stork made his appearance, bringing with him the contract and deed of sale. He was a tall, strongly-built man, with a countenance by no means pleasant, though it almost always wore a smile; but this smile, if narrowly scrutinised, had a sinister expression, and seemed to convulse his features. He sported a gaudy waistcoat, and was dressed like an old bachelor who was going on some matrimonial expedition, and wished to conceal his age. This day he was even more complaisant than usual; praised the beauty of the infant, remarked its likeness to its lovely mother, and offered Frants a loan of money to purchase new furniture, and make any improvements he might wish in the interior of the house.

Frants thanked him, but declined the offer, assuring him that he was quite satisfied with the house and furniture as they were, and wished everything about him to wear its former aspect. However, he said, he certainly would like to enlarge the workshop by adding to it the old lumber-room at the back of the house, the entrance to which he found was closed.

Mr. Stork then informed him that there was a door on the opposite