lately taken up his abode, he saw me from the window, and before I had
had time to knock, he had opened the door.

"Come in," he said. "I saw you coming. Come to my den, and we will have
a pipe together."

"I have brought some of my favourite cigars," I said, "and I want you to
try them."

"With all my heart."

The room to which he led me was small, but disfigured with no offensive
tidiness. Not a spot of wall was to be seen for books, and yet there
were not many books after all. We sat for some minutes enjoying the
fragrance of the western incense, without other communion than that of
the clouds we were blowing, and what I gathered from the walls. For I am
old enough, as I have already confessed, to be getting long-sighted, and
I made use of the gift in reading the names of the curate's books, as I
had read those of his brother's. They were mostly books of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, with a large admixture from the nineteenth,
and more than the usual proportion of the German classics; though,
strange to say, not a single volume of German Theology could I discover.
The curate was the first to break the silence.

"I find this a very painful cigar," he said, with a half laugh.

"I am sorry you don't like it. Try another."

"The cigar is magnificent."