obacco, and afterward, when he was restored to his senses that he would
jilt the Arcadia gradually. He had pulled some distance down the river,
without regarding the Cliveden Woods, when he all but ran into a blaze
of Chinese lanterns. It was a house-boat called--let us change its name
to the _Heathen Chinee_. Staying his dingy with a jerk, Scrymgeour
looked up, when a wonderful sight met his eyes. On the open window of an
apparently empty saloon stood a round tin of tobacco, marked "Arcadia
Mixture."

[Illustration]

Scrymgeour sat gaping. The only sound to be heard, except a soft splash
of water under the house-boat, came from the kitchen, where a servant
was breaking crockery for supper. The romantic figure in the dingy
stretched out his hand and then drew it back, remembering that there was
a law against this sort of thing. He thought to himself, "If I were to
wait until the owner returns, no doubt a man who smokes the Arcadia
would feel for me." Then his fatal horror of explanations whispered to
him, "The owner may be a stupid, garrulous fellow who will detain you
here half the night explaining your situation." Scrymgeour, I want to
impress upon the reader, was, like myself, the sort of a man who, if
asked whether he did not think "In Memoriam" Mr. Browning's greatest
poem, would say Yes, as the easiest way of ending the conversation.
Obviously he would save himself trouble by simply annexing the tin.
He seized it and rowed off.

Smokers, who know how tobacco develops the finer feelings, hardly
require to be told what happened next. Suddenly Scrymgeour remembered
that he was probably leaving the owner of the _Heathen Chinee_
without any Arcadia Mixture. He at once filled his pouch, and, pulling
softly back to the house-boat, replaced the tin on the window, his bosom
swelling with the pride of those who give presents. At the same moment a
hand gripped him by the neck, and a girl, somewhere on deck, screamed.

Scrymgeour's captor, who was no other than the owner of the _Heathen
Chinee_, dragged him fiercely into the house-boat and stormed at him
for five minutes. My friend shuddered as he thought of the explanations
to come when he was allowed to speak, and gradually he realized that he
had been mistaken for someone else--apparently for some young blade who
had been carrying on a clandestine flirtation with the old gentleman's
daughter. It will take an hour, thought Scrymgeour, to convince him that
I am not that