"Spirit of the Perverse" pervading all things mundane, which we poor mortals are called upon to bear as best we may. Therefore I tossed aside the charred match, and having searched fruitlessly through my pockets for another, waited philosophically for some "good Samaritan" to come along. The bank I have mentioned sloped away gently on my left, thus affording an uninterrupted view of the path. 

 Now as my eyes followed this winding path I beheld an individual some distance away who crawled upon his hands and knees, evidently searching for something. As I watched, he succeeded in raking a Panama hat from beneath a bush, and having dusted it carefully with his handkerchief, replaced it upon his head and continued his advance. 

 With some faint hope that there might be a loose match hiding away in some corner of my pockets, I went through them again more carefully, but alas! with no better success; whereupon I gave it up and turned to glance at the approaching figure. My astonishment may be readily imagined when I beheld him in precisely the same attitude as before—that is to say, upon his hands and knees. 

 I was yet puzzling over this phenomenon when he again raked out the Panama on the end of the hunting-crop he carried, dusted it as before, looking about him the while with a bewildered air, and setting it firmly upon his head, came down the path. He was a tall young fellow, scrupulously neat and well groomed from the polish of his brown riding boots to his small, sleek moustache, which was parted with elaborate care and twisted into two fine points. There was about his whole person an indefinable air of self-complacent satisfaction, but he carried his personality in his moustache, so to speak, which, though small, as I say, and precise to a hair, yet obtruded itself upon one in a vaguely unpleasant way. Noticing all this, I thought I might make a very good guess as to his identity if need were. 

 All at once, as I watched him—like a bird rising from her nest—the devoted Panama rose in the air, turned over once or twice and fluttered (I use the word figuratively) into a bramble bush. Bad language was writ large in every line of his body as he stood looking about him, the hunting-crop quivering in his grasp. 

 It was at this precise juncture that his eye encountered me, and pausing only to recover his unfortunate headgear, he strode toward where I sat, "Do you know anything about this?" he inquired in a somewhat aggressive manner, holding up a length of black thread. 

 "A piece of ordinary 

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