“One night, at a later hour than this, when the rain was heavier than this, I was alone under an awning that was smaller than this. Being without umbrella and overcoat, I saw at least a quarter of an hour waiting for me. The thought was dismal. “Happy idea! I would smoke. I had a cigar in my mouth in an instant. “Horrors! I had no matches. “The desire to smoke instantly increased tenfold. I puffed despairingly at my unlit cigar. No miracle occurred to ignite it. I looked longingly at the electric lights and the gas-lamps in the distance. “Like a sailor cast upon an island and straining his eyes on the lookout for a ship, I stood there scanning the prospect in search of a man with a light. I was Enoch Arden; the awning was my palm-tree. “Ten minutes passed. No craft hove in sight. “Suddenly uncertain footsteps were heard. I looked. Some one came that way. It was a squalid-looking personage--a professional beggar, half-drunk. He landed upon my island, beneath my awning. “'For charity's sake, give me a match!' I cried. “He looked at me--'sized me up,' in the technical terminology of his trade. Intelligence began to illumine his countenance. He saw that the opportunity of his life had come. He held out a match. “'I'll sell it to you for fifty cents,' he said, with a grin. “I had erred in revealing the depth of my want, the extent of my distress. “I compromised by promising to give him a half-dollar if I should succeed in lighting my cigar with his solitary match. We did succeed. He took the fifty and started back for the saloon from whence he had come. “Oh, my boy, the irony of fate--that same old oft-quoted irony! “I hadn't blown three mouthfuls of smoke from that cigar when a friend came along with a lighted cigar, an umbrella, and a box full of matches. “The whole effect of this story lies in the value that fifty cents possessed for me at that time. It was my last fifty cents, and two days stood between that night and salary day. “I had another experience--” But a night car came in view from around a corner, my friend ran for it, and his third tale remains untold. XII. -- SHANDY'S REVENGE He was old enough to know better, and a superficial observer might have thought that he did. But a severe and haughty manner in repose is not any indication of knowledge, nor is a well-kept beard, even when it is turning gray. Melrose Welty, the possessor of these and other ways and features symbolical of wisdom, had no higher occupation in life than to sit in club-houses and cafés, telling of conquests won by him over women, chiefly over soubrettes and chorus girls. Of his means of livelihood, no one had certain knowledge. He always dressed well, but he abode in a lodging-house, to which he never invited any of his associates. He affected the society of newspaper men, some of whom pronounced him a good fellow until they discovered that he was an ass; and he never refused an invitation to have a drink.