ith ink; and he now produced a cigar-box, containing
six cigars.

"Gents," said he, "here is the fag end of a box of cigars. It's not
like having the pick of a box, but they are all I have left."

Mr. Mathers, J. George Watts, and the brother-in-law each took a
cigar with that careless yet deferential manner which always
distinguishes the treatee from the treator; and then the box was
protruded in an offhand way toward Harry Covare, the personal clerk
of the Registrar; but this young man declined, saying that he
preferred cigarettes, a package of which he drew from his pocket. He
had very often seen that cigar-box with a Havana brand, which he
himself had brought from the other room after the Registrar had
emptied it, passed around with six cigars, no more nor less, and he
was wise enough to know that the Shipwreck Clerk did not expect to
supply him with smoking-material. If that gentleman had offered to
the friends who generally dropped in on him on Wednesday afternoon
the paper bag of cigars sold at five cents each when bought singly,
but half a dozen for a quarter of a dollar, they would have been
quite as thankfully received; but it better pleased his deprecative
soul to put them in an empty cigar-box, and thus throw around them
the halo of the presumption that ninety-four of their imported
companions had been smoked.

The Shipwreck Clerk, having lighted a cigar for himself, sat down in
his revolving chair, turned his back to his desk, and threw himself
into an easy cross-legged attitude, which showed that he was
perfectly at home in that office. Harry Covare mounted a high stool,
while the visitors seated themselves in three wooden arm-chairs. But
few words had been said, and each man had scarcely tossed his first
tobacco-ashes on the floor, when some one wearing heavy boots was
heard opening an outside door and entering the Registrar's room.
Harry Covare jumped down from his stool, laid his half-smoked
cigarette thereon, and bounced into the next room, closing the door
after him. In about a minute he returned, and the Shipwreck Clerk
looked at him inquiringly.

"An old cock in a pea-jacket," said Mr. Covare, taking up his
cigarette and mounting his stool. "I told him the Registrar would be
here in the morning. He said he had something to report about a
shipwreck, and I told him the Registrar would be here in the
morning. Had to tell him that three times, and then he went."

"School don't keep Wednesday afte