he smoking room. After ten p.m. the 'open sesame' to our door
was a rattle on the letter box and Louis' fancy for the mysterious was
whetted by this admittance by secret sign, and we liked his special
rat-a-tat for it was the forerunner of an hour or two of talk."

They teased him about his queer clothes and laughed at some of his wild
ideas, but he seldom was angry at them for it and never stayed away very
long.

With them he often skated on Duddington Loch or canoed on the Firth of
Forth. One summer he and Sir Walter yachted off the west coast of
Scotland, and still another year, when longing for further wandering
possessed them, they made a trip in canoes through the inland waters of
Belgium from Antwerp to Brussels, and then into France and by the rivers
Sambre and Oise nearly to Paris.

In the "Inland Voyage," where Stevenson describes this trip, he calls
Sir Walter and his canoe "Cigarette" while he was "Arethusa." Adventures
were plentiful, and they aroused much curiosity among the dwellers on
the banks, with whom they made friends as they went along.

Once Arethusa was all but drowned, when his canoe was overturned by the
rapids; and on several occasions, when they applied for a night's
lodging, they were suspected of being tramps or peddlers because of
their bedraggled appearance.

One evening after a hard day's paddling in the rain they landed tired,
wet, and hungry at the little town of La Fere. "The Cigarette and I
could not sufficiently congratulate each other on the prospect," says
the Arethusa, "for we had been told there was a capital inn at La Fere.
Such a dinner as we were going to eat. Such beds as we were going to
sleep in, and all the while the rain raining on homeless folk over all
the poplared country-side. It made our mouths water. The inn bore the
name of some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget which.
But I shall never forget how spacious and how eminently comfortable it
looked as we drew near.... A rattle of many dishes came to our ears; we
sighted a great field of tablecloth; the kitchen glowed like a forge and
smelt like a garden of things to eat.

"Into this ... you are now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a
pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag upon
his arm. I do not believe I have a sound view of that kitchen; I saw it
through a sort of glory, but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps
of cook-men, who all turned round from thei