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.