ific method is to begin at the beginning. May
I ask how this pipe came into your possession?"

Tress paused before he answered.

"You may ask." He paused again. "Oh, you certainly may ask. But it doesn't
follow that I shall tell you."

"Surely your object, like ours, can be but the Spreading About of the
Truth?"

"I don't see it at all. It is possible to imagine a case in which the
spreading about of the truth might make me look a little awkward."

"Indeed!" Brasher pursed up his lips. "Your words would almost lead one to
suppose that there was something about your method of acquiring the pipe
which you have good and weighty reasons for concealing."

"I don't know why I should conceal the thing from you. I don't suppose
either of you is any better than I am. I don't mind telling you how I got
the pipe. I stole it."

"Stole it!"

Brasher seemed both amazed and shocked. But I, who had previous experience
of Tress's methods of adding to his collection, was not at all surprised.
Some of the pipes which he calls his, if only the whole truth about them
were publicly known, would send him to jail.

"That's nothing!" he continued. "All collectors steal! The eighth
commandment was not intended to apply to them. Why, Pugh there has
'conveyed' three fourths of the pipes which he flatters himself are his."

I was so dumfoundered by the charge that it took my breath away. I sat in
astounded silence. Tress went raving on:

"I was so shy of this particular pipe when I had obtained it, that I put
it away for quite three months. When I took it out to have a look at it
something about the thing so tickled me that I resolved to smoke it. Owing
to peculiar circumstances attending the manner in which the thing came
into my possession, and on which I need not dwell--you don't like to dwell
on those sort of things, do you, Pugh?--I knew really nothing about the
pipe. As was the case with Pugh, one peculiarity I learned from actual
experience. It was also from actual experience that I learned that the
thing was--well, I said haunted, but you may use any other word you like."

"Tell us, as briefly as possible, what it was you really did discover."

"Take the pipe out of the box!" Brasher took the pipe out of the box and
held it in his hand. "You see that creature on it. Well, when I first had
it it was underneath the pipe."

"How do you mean that it was underneath the pipe?"

"It was bunched together underneath the stem, just a