er-table, I paused in the middle of a
sentence as if stricken with sudden pain. Then my hand went down to my
pocket. Sometimes even after I felt my pipe, I had a conviction that it
was stopped, and only by a desperate effort did I keep myself from
producing it and blowing down it. I distinctly remember once dreaming
three nights in succession that I was on the Scotch express without it.
More than once, I know, I have wandered in my sleep, looking for it
in all sorts of places, and after I went to bed I generally jumped out,
just to make sure of it. My strong belief, then, is that I was the
ghost seen by the writer of the paper. I fancy that I rose in my sleep,
lighted a candle, and wandered down to the hall to feel if my pipe was
safe in my coat, which was hanging there. The light had gone out when
I was in the hall. Probably the body seen to fall on the hall floor was
some other coat which I had flung there to get more easily at my own.
I cannot account for the bell; but perhaps the gentleman in the Haunted
Chamber dreamed that part of the affair. I had put on the overcoat
before reascending; indeed I may say that next morning I was surprised
to find it on a chair in my bedroom, also to notice that there were
several long streaks of candle-grease on my dressing-gown. I conclude
that the pistol, which gave my face such a look of triumph, was my
brier, which I found in the morning beneath my pillow. The strangest
thing of all, perhaps, is that when I awoke there was a smell of
tobacco-smoke in the bedroom.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXIV.

NOT THE ARCADIA.

[Illustration]

Those who do not know the Arcadia may have a mixture that their
uneducated palate loves, but they are always ready to try other
mixtures. The Arcadian, however, will never help himself from an
outsider's pouch. Nevertheless, there was one black week when we all
smoked the ordinary tobaccoes. Owing to a terrible oversight on the part
of our purveyor, there was no Arcadia to smoke.

We ought to have put our pipes aside and existed on cigars; but the
pipes were old friends, and desert them we could not. Each of us bought
a different mixture, but they tasted alike and were equally abominable.
I fell ill. Doctor Southwick, knowing no better, called my malady by
a learned name, but I knew to what I owed it. Never shall I forget
my delight when Jimmy broke into my room one day with a pound-tin of
the Arcadia. Weak though I was, I opened my windo