Meaghan was sitting, presumably reading a newspaper, which was the only kind of "literature" I ever saw him read. His attitude appeared to me to be assumed and I had a notion that, when the dog first barked at my approach, he had been busy with the contents of a brass-bound, wooden chest which now lay half under his bunk, in a recess in the far corner. "Hello! Thought you might come over. Sit down," he greeted. "Saw the boss pull out half an hour ago. I'm just sittin' down for my turn at the newspaper. They leave me a bundle off the steamer once in a while. This one's from the old country;--the _Liverpool Monitor_. It's two months old, but what's the dif,--the news is just as good as if it was yesterday's or to-morrow's." I looked round Jake's shanty. Considering it was a single-roomed place and used for cooking, washing, sleeping and everything else, it was wonderfully tidy, although, to say truth, there was little in it after all to occasion untidiness: a stove, a pot, a frying-pan, an enamelled tin teapot, some crockery, a table, an oil lamp, three chairs, the brass-bound trunk, two wheat-flake boxes and Jake's bed,--with one other addition,--a fifteen-gallon keg with a stopcock in it and set on a wooden stand close to his bunk. An odour of shell-fish pervaded the atmosphere, coming from some kind of soup made from clams and milk, on which Jake had evidently been dining. The residue of it still sat in a pot on the stove. This, I discovered, was Jake's favourite dish. He rose, took two breakfast cups from a shelf and went over to the keg in the corner. He filled up both of them to the brim. "Have a drink, George?" he invited, offering me one of the cups. "What is it?" I asked, thinking it might be a cider of some kind. "What d'ye suppose, man?--ginger beer? It's good rye whiskey." From the odour, I had ascertained this for myself before he spoke. "No, thanks, Jake, I don't drink." "Holy mackinaw!" he exclaimed, almost dropping the cups in his astonishment. "If you don't drink, how in the Sam Hill are you going to make it stick up here? Why, man, you'll go batty in the winter time, for it's lonely as hell." "From all accounts, Jake, hell is not a very lonely place," I laughed. "Aw!--you know what I mean," he put in. "I'll have plenty of work to do in the store; enough to keep me from feeling lonely." "Not you. Once it's goin', it'll be easy's rollin' off'n a log. What'll you do o' nights, 'specially winter nights,--if you don't drink?" He sat down and began to empty his cup of liquor by the gulp. His dog, which had been lying sullenly on the floor near the stove, got up and ambled leisurely to Jake's feet. It looked up at him as he drank, then it put its two front paws on Jake's knees, as if to attract his attention. Meaghan stopped his imbibing and stroked the dog's head. "Well,--well--Mike; and did I forget you?"