“D’you smoke it’?” asked Jackson, brutally.

We gave him up.  In awful silence each of us produced his wrappings and his caskets, extracted the shining briar, smeared it with cosmetics, and polished it more reverently than a peace time Guardsman polishes his buttons when warned for duty next day at “Buck.”
       * * * * *
And Jackson smoked his pipe in secret.  He would take no leaf from the book of the Sassenachs.

And the War went on.
       * * * * *
Jackson went on leave.  To his deep disgust he had to wait a few hours in London on his way to more civilised parts, and fate led him idling to Brownhill’s.  He flattened his Celtic nose on the window and stared fascinated at the array of super-pipes displayed there.  After a furtive glance along the street he crept into the temple.  A white-coated priest met him.

“I—­I’m wantin’—­a—­a pipe,” said Jackson.  He saw the priest reel and turn pale to the lips.  “I should say a—­a Brownhill,” he added hastily.  The other man gulped, steadied himself with an effort, and gave a ghastly smile.  If you had walked into a temple at Thibet and planked down sixpence and asked for an idol wrapped up in brown paper you could not have done a more dreadful thing than Jackson had done; but the priest forgave him and produced in silence a trayful of Brownhills.  Then was Jackson like unto ELIA’S little Chinese boy with “the crackling.”  He touched a briar and was converted.  He stroked them as though they were kittens, bought ten of them, a pound of polish, fifty silver wind-pipes and a bale of chamois-leather.  The priest took a deep breath.

“You are a full-blooded man, Sir,” said he, “if you will excuse me saying so, and you should smoke in your new Brownhills a mixture which has a proportion of Latakia to Virginian of one to nineteen—­a small percentage of glycerine and cucumber being added because you have red hair, and the whole submitted to a pressure of eighteen hundred foot-pounds to the square millimetre, under violet rays.  This will be known as ‘Your Mixture,’ Number 56785-6/11, and will be supplied to no one else on earth, except under penalty of death.

“I will take a ton,” said Jackson with glazing eyes.

This was a man after the priest’s own heart.  He took another deep breath and dived into the strong-room.  He returned under the escort of ten armed men, each of them chained by the wrist to an iron box, which he unlocked with difficulty.  Inside the iron box was a thing which Jackson a few months ago would have called a pipe.  He knew better now.  In awful silence the priest lifted it from its satin bed.  “This,” he whispered, “was once smoked by Brownhill himself.”

Jackson put out a hand to take it.  The priest hesitated, then laid it gently on his customer’s palm.

And Jackson dropped it.

Jackson has never been heard of since.