s happy, indeed, to hear that. But you were
premature. I was deploring your destitution, not of cash, but of
confidence. You think the Natural Bone-setter can't help you. Well,
suppose he can't, have you any objection to telling him your story? You,
my friend, have, in a signal way, experienced adversity. Tell me, then,
for my private good, how, without aid from the noble cripple, Epictetus,
you have arrived at his heroic sang-froid in misfortune."

At these words the cripple fixed upon the speaker the hard ironic eye of
one toughened and defiant in misery, and, in the end, grinned upon him
with his unshaven face like an ogre.

"Come, come, be sociable--be human, my friend. Don't make that face; it
distresses me."

"I suppose," with a sneer, "you are the man I've long heard of--The
Happy Man."

"Happy? my friend. Yes, at least I ought to be. My conscience is
peaceful. I have confidence in everybody. I have confidence that, in my
humble profession, I do some little good to the world. Yes, I think
that, without presumption, I may venture to assent to the proposition
that I am the Happy Man--the Happy Bone-setter."

"Then, you shall hear my story. Many a month I have longed to get hold
of the Happy Man, drill him, drop the powder, and leave him to explode
at his leisure.".

"What a demoniac unfortunate" exclaimed the herb-doctor retreating.
"Regular infernal machine!"

"Look ye," cried the other, stumping after him, and with his horny hand
catching him by a horn button, "my name is Thomas Fry. Until my----"

--"Any relation of Mrs. Fry?" interrupted the other. "I still correspond
with that excellent lady on the subject of prisons. Tell me, are you
anyway connected with _my_ Mrs. Fry?"

"Blister Mrs. Fry! What do them sentimental souls know of prisons or any
other black fact? I'll tell ye a story of prisons. Ha, ha!"

The herb-doctor shrank, and with reason, the laugh being strangely
startling.

"Positively, my friend," said he, "you must stop that; I can't stand
that; no more of that. I hope I have the milk of kindness, but your
thunder will soon turn it."

"Hold, I haven't come to the milk-turning part yet My name is Thomas
Fry. Until my twenty-third year I went by the nickname of Happy
Tom--happy--ha, ha! They called me Happy Tom, d'ye see? because I was so
good-natured and laughing all the time, just as I am now--ha, ha!"

Upon this the herb-doctor would, perhaps, have run, but once more the
hyaena claw