l a thing. I'm a great smoker, and I
should like a souvenir now I'm going away. Would you mind carving me a
pipe, now? It would be pleasant to have a trifle like that turned out by
the hands of genius. I should prize it more than a statue.' 'Ah!' said
Antoletti, beaming on him, 'ah, signor! you shall have it. It shall be
the last pipe I will ever carve, and I will remember you whilst I
carve it.' So the pipe was carved--a work of exquisitely intricate and
delicate art. On the rear of the bowl, in view of the smoker, was
a female face with a wreath of flowers about the forehead, and with
flowers and grapes hanging down in graceful intermingling with
flowing bands of hair. These flowers ran into ragged weeds and
bedraggled-looking grasses on the other side, and from these grinned a
death's head. In at the open mouth of the skull and out at the eyes, and
wrapped in sinuous windings at the base, coiled a snake. The pipe was
not over large, for all its wealth of ornamentation. Barndale had hung
over it when he smoked it first with the care of an affectionate nurse
over a baby. It had rewarded his cares by colouring magnificently until
it had grown a deep equable ebony everywhere. Not a trace of burn
or scratch defaced its surface, and no touch of its first beauty was
destroyed by use. Apart from its memories, Barndale would not have sold
that pipe except at some astounding figure, which nobody would ever have
been likely to bid for it. The precious souvenir was in his pocket, snug
in its case. In an evil hour he drew it out, tenderly filled it and lit
it. He and Leland were riding at a walk, and there seemed no danger,
when suddenly his horse shied violently, and with the shock crash went
Barndale's teeth through the delicate amber, and the precious pipe fell
to the roadway. Barndale was down in a second, and picked it up in two
pieces. The stem was broken within an inch of the marvellous bowl. He
lamented over it with a chastened grief which here and there a smoker
and an enthusiast will understand. The pathos of the situation may be
caviare to the general, but the true amateur in pipes will sympathise
with him. I have an ugly old meerschaum of my own which cheered me
through a whole campaign, and, poor as I am, I would not part with it or
break it for the price of this story.

Barndale was displaying his mangled darling to Papa Leland in the salle
a manger, when Demetri Agryopoulo came in with a friend and went out
again a