to change his mood with the
most magical celerity. As he looked down at it, and felt the fragrant
rum steaming softy into his nostrils, his face expanded, and while his
left hand unsteadily conveyed the tumbler to his lips, his right reached
across the table and fraternally extended itself to Mat. "My dear
friend," said Mr. Blyth affectionately, "how kind you are! Pray how do
you make the Squaw's mixture?"

"I say, Mat, leave off smoking, and tell us something," interposed Zack.
"Bowl away at once with one of your tremendous stories, or Blyth will
be bragging again about his rickety old legs. Talk, man! Tell us your
famous story of how you lost your scalp."

Mat laid down his pipe, and for a moment looked very attentively at
Mr. Blyth--then, with the most uncharacteristic readiness and docility,
began his story at once, without requiring another word of persuasion.
In general, the very reverse of tedious when he related any experiences
of his own, he seemed, on this occasion, perversely bent on letting his
narrative ooze out to the most interminable length. Instead of adhering
to the abridged account of his terrible adventure, which he had given
Zack when they first talked together on Blackfriars Bridge, he now dwelt
drowsily on the minutest particulars of the murderous chase that had so
nearly cost him his life, enumerating them one after the other in the
same heavy droning voice which never changed its tone in the slightest
degree as he went on. After about ten minutes' endurance of the
narrative-infliction which he had himself provoked, young Thorpe was
just beginning to feel a sensation of utter oblivion stealing over
him, when a sound of lusty snoring close at his back startled him into
instant wakefulness. He looked round. There was Mr. Blyth placidly and
profoundly asleep, with his mouth wide open and his head resting against
the wall.

"Stop!" whispered Mat, as Zack seized on a half-squeezed lemon and took
aim at Valentine's mouth. "Don't wake him yet. What do you say to some
oysters?"

"Give us a dish, and I'll show you," returned young Thorpe. "Sally's in
bed by this time--I'll fetch the oysters myself from over the way. But,
I say, I must have a friendly shot with something or other, at dear old
Blyth's gaping mouth."

"Try him with an oyster, when you come back," said Mat, producing from
the cupboard behind him a large yellow pie-dish. "Go on! I'll see you
down stairs, and leave the candle on the land