XL] 



WILSON'S REPORT. 



179 



pantry, until the cook became almost half-witted by reason of 

 his Jeremiads. Yet I must not give you the impression that 

 the poor fellow was the least wanting in pluck — far from it. 

 Surely it requires the highest order of courage to anticipate 

 every species of disaster every moment of the day, and yet 

 to meet the impending fate like a man — as he did. Was it 

 his fault that fate was not equally ready to meet him ? His 

 share of the business was always done : he was ever pre- 

 pared for the worst; but the most critical circumstances 



SIGURDR. 



never disturbed the gravity of his carriage, and the fact 

 of our being destined to go to the bottom before tea-time 

 would not have caused him to lay out the dinner-table a 

 whit less symmetrically. Still, I own, the style of his service 

 was slightly depressing. He laid out my clean shirt of a 

 morning as if it had been a shroud ; and cleaned my boots 

 as though for a man on his last legs. The fact is, he was 

 imaginative and atrabilious, — contemplating life through a 

 medium of the colour of his own complexion. 



This was the cheerful kind of report he used invariably 

 to bring me of a morning. Coming to the side of my cot 



