The Major winced, but he took pity. "Come, come," said he, "we'll pull through. I'll go home with you." They rode off together. That night Richard went to bed miserably drunk; although Major Luttrel had left him at ten o'clock, adjuring him to drink no more. He awoke the next morning in a violent fever; and before evening the doctor, whom one of his hired men had brought to his bedside, had come and looked grave and pronounced him very ill. DOCTOR MOLKE. A SKETCH FROM LIFE. As my own fancy led me into the Greenland seas, so chance sent me into a Greenland port. It was a choice little harbor, a good way north of the Arctic Circle,--fairly within the realm of hyperborean barrenness,--very near the northernmost border of civilized settlement. But civilization was exhibited there by unmistakable evidences;--a very dilute civilization, it is true, yet, such as it was, outwardly recognizable; for Christian habitations and Christian beings were in sight from the vessel's deck,--at least some of the human beings who appeared upon the beach were dressed like Christians, and veritable smoke curled gracefully upward into the bright air above the roofs of houses from veritable chimneys. We had been fighting the Arctic ice and the Arctic storms for so long a time, that it was truly refreshing to get into this good harbor. The little craft which had borne us thither seemed positively to enjoy her repose, as she lay quietly to her anchors on the still waters, in the calm air and the blazing sunshine of the Arctic noonday. As for myself, I was simply wondering what I should find ashore. A slender fringe of European custom bordering native barbarism and dirt was what I anticipated; for, as I looked upon the naked rocks,--which there, as in other Greenland ports, afforded room for a few straggling huts of native fishermen and hunters, with only now and then a more pretentious white man's lodge,--I could hardly imagine that much would be found seductive to the fancy or inviting to the eye. A country where there is no soil to yield any part of man's subsistence seemed to offer such a slender chance for man in the battle of life, that I could well imagine it to be repulsive rather than attractive; yet I was eager to see how poor men might be, and live. While thus looking forward to a novel experience, I was unconsciously preparing myself for a great surprise. Whatever there might be of poverty in the condition of the few dozens of human beings who there forced a scanty subsistence from the sea, I was to discover one person in the place who did in no way share it,--who, born as it might seem to different destinies, yet, voluntarily choosing wild Nature for companionship, and rising superior to the forbidding climate and the general desolation, rejoiced here in his own strong manhood, and lived seemingly contented as well with himself as with the great world of which he heard from afar but the faint murmurs.