The effect on Valentine of this hospitable action proved to be singularly soothing and beneficial. He had been getting gradually more and more disputatious for the last ten minutes; but the moment the steaming glass touched his hand, it seemed 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 landing, and the door on the jar, so as you can get in quietly. Steady, young ‘un! and mind the dish when you cross the road.” With these words Mat dismissed Zack from the street-door to the oyster shop; and then returned immediately to his guest upstairs.