his chair.
It had been agreed that I should begin my last pipe at one precisely.
Whatever my feelings were up to this point I had kept them out of my
face, but I suppose a change came over me now. I tried to lift my brier
from the table, but my hand shook and the pipe tapped, tapped on the
deal like an auctioneer's hammer.

"Let me fill it," Jimmy said, and he took my old brier from me. He
scraped it energetically so that it might hold as much as possible,
and then he filled it. Not one of them, I am glad to remember, proposed
a cigar for my last smoke, or thought it possible that I would say
farewell to tobacco through the medium of any other pipe than my brier.
I liked my brier best. I have said this already, but I must say it
again. Jimmy handed the brier to Gilray, who did not surrender it until
it reached my mouth. Then Scrymgeour made a spill, and Marriot lighted
it. In another moment I was smoking my last pipe. The others glanced at
one another, hesitated, and put their pipes into their pockets.

There was little talking, for they all gazed at me as if something
astounding might happen at any moment. The clock had stopped, but the
ventilator was clicking. Although Jimmy and the others saw only me, I
tried not to see only them. I conjured up the face of a lady, and she
smiled encouragingly, and then I felt safer. But at times her face was
lost in smoke, or suddenly it was Marriot's face, eager, doleful, wistful.

At first I puffed vigorously and wastefully, then I became scientific
and sent out rings of smoke so strong and numerous that half a dozen
of them were in the air at a time. In past days I had often followed
a ring over the table, across chairs, and nearly out at the window, but
that was when I blew one by accident and was loath to let it go. Now
I distributed them among my friends, who let them slip away into the
looking-glass. I think I had almost forgotten what I was doing and where
I was when an awful thing happened. My pipe went out!

[Illustration]

"There are remnants in it yet," Jimmy cried, with forced cheerfulness,
while Gilray blew the ashes off my sleeve, Marriot slipped a cushion
behind my back, and Scrymgeour made another spill. Again I smoked, but
no longer recklessly.

It is revealing no secret to say that a drowning man sees his whole past
unfurl before him like a panorama. So little, however, was I, now on the
eve of a great happiness, like a drowning man, that nothing whatever
pa