But now there was fresh help at hand, and in another instant the gallant young man and the boy were in the boat that came up; while with a sobbing sigh of relief I went home, thinking to myself that I would sooner have been that brave man than the greatest hero of yore. CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. THE EVILS OF A WIG. Now it's all very well to say that truth is strange--stranger than fiction; but the saying won't wash, it isn't fast colours, but partakes of the nature of those carried by certain Austrian regiments--it runs; for there is no rule without an exception, and no person in the full enjoyment of his mental faculties will pretend to say that truth was stranger than fiction in the case of Mr Smith's wig, for the fiction-- the wig--was, to all intents and purposes, stranger than the truth--the genuine head of hair. Mr Smith--Mr Artaxerxes Smith--in his younger days had often visited the hairdresser's, to sit in state with a flowing print robe tucked in all round his neck, but not so close but the tiny snips and chips from his Hyperion curls would get down within his shirt-collar, and tickle and tease for hours after; he had listened while the oily-tongued-- scented oily-tongued--hairdresser had snipped away and told him that his hair was turning a little grey, or that it was growing thin at the crown, or very dry, or full of dandriff, or coming off, or suffering from one of those inevitable failings which are never discoverable save when having one's hair cut. "Our Philo-homo-coma Brushitinibus would remove the symptoms in a few days, sir," the hairdresser would say; "remove the dandriff, clarify the scalp, soften the hair, and bring up a fine soft down that would soon strengthen into flowing locks." But though in the glass before him Mr Smith could see the noble hair and brilliant whiskers of his operator, he would not listen, he only growled out, "Make haste," or "Never mind," or something else very rude, and the consequence was that he suffered for his neglect of the good hairdressers advice, so that at last Mr Smith couldn't have given any one a lock of his hair to save his life. He was bald--completely bald-- his head looked like vegetable ivory, and in despair he consulted a Saville-row physician. "Nature, sir, nature," said the great man; "a peculiarity of constitution, a failing in the absorbents and dessicating, wasting in the structural development of the cuticle and sub-cuticle--the hair being a small filament issuing from the surface of the scalp from a bulbous radix, and forming a capillary covering; which covering, in your case, has failed, sir, failed." Mr Smith knew that before he made up his mind to invest a guinea, but he only said-- "And what course should you pursue in my case?" "Well, yes--er--er--um, ah! I should--er--that is to say, I should wear a wig."