He lay in a dilapidated chair beside the stove, and the little bare room through which its pipe ran was permeated² with the smell of fresh shavings, hot iron, and the fumes³ of indifferent tobacco. A carpenter's bench ran along one end of it, and was now occupied by a new wagon pole the man had fashioned out of a slender birch. A Marlin rifle, an ax, and a big saw hung beneath the head of an antelope⁴ on the wall above the bench, and all of them showed signs of use and glistened⁵ with oil. Opposite to them a few shelves were filled with simple crockery and cooking utensils⁶, and these also shone spotlessly. There was a pair of knee boots in one corner with a patch partly sewn on to one of them, and the harness in another showed traces of careful repair. A bookcase hung above them, and its somewhat tattered⁷ contents indicated that the man who had chosen and evidently handled them frequently, possessed⁸ tastes any one who did not know that country would scarcely have expected to find in a prairie farmer. A table and one or two rude chairs made by their owner's hands completed the furniture, but while all hinted at poverty, it also suggested neatness, industry and care, for the room bore the impress of its occupier's individuality as rooms not infrequently do.

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