"I'd better go myself first and prepare the way, Mem," Dickson whispered, and followed the man across the hall.
He found himself ushered into a fair-sized room where a bright fire was burning.

On a table lay the remains of breakfast, and the odour of food mingled pleasantly with the scent of peat.

The horns and heads of big game, foxes' masks, the model of a gigantic salmon, and several bookcases adorned the walls, and books and maps were mixed with decanters and cigar-boxes on the long sideboard.

After the wild out of doors the place seemed the very shrine of comfort.

A young man sat in an arm-chair by the fire with a leg on a stool; he was smoking a pipe, and reading the Field, and on another stool at his elbow was a pile of new novels.