Take my advice, young men, and always carry your tobacco in a water-tight metal box.' As he spoke he drew a flat box from his pocket, and several wooden tubes, which he screwed together to form a long pipe.

This he stuffed with tobacco, and having lit it by means of a flint and steel with a piece of touch-paper from the inside of his box, he curled his legs under him in Eastern fashion, and settled down to enjoy a smoke.

There was something so peculiar about the whole incident, and so preposterous about the man's appearance and actions, that we both broke into a roar of laughter, which lasted until for very exhaustion we were compelled to stop.

He neither joined in our merriment nor expressed offence at it, but continued to suck away at his long wooden tube with a perfectly stolid and impassive face, save that the half-covered eyes glinted rapidly backwards and forwards from one to the other of us.
'You will excuse our laughter, sir,' I said at last; 'my friend and I are unused to such adventures, and are merry at the happy ending of it.
May we ask whom it is that we have picked up ?' 'Decimus Saxon is my name,' the stranger answered; 'I am the tenth child of a worthy father, as the Latin implies.

There are but nine betwixt me and an inheritance.