But she had never seen
a room such as the one she now found herself in. It conformed to none
of her preconceived ideas.
There was furniture of a sort unknown to her, tables and chairs
fashioned by hand with infinite labor and rude skill, massive in
structure, upholstered with the skins of wild beasts common to the
region. Upon the walls hung pictures, dainty black-and-white prints,
and a water color or two. And between the pictures were nailed heads
of mountain sheep and goat, the antlers of deer and caribou. Above
the fireplace spread the huge shovel horns of a moose, bearing across
the prongs a shotgun and fishing rods. The center of the
floor--itself, as she could see, of hand-smoothed logs--was lightened
with a great black and red and yellow rug of curious weave. Covering
up the bare surface surrounding it were bearskins, black and brown.
Her feet rested in the fur of a monster silvertip, fur thicker and
softer than the pile of any carpet ever fabricated by man. All around
the walls ran shelves filled with books. A guitar stood in one corner,
a mandolin in another. The room was all of sixteen by twenty feet, and
it was filled with trophies of the wild--and books.
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