oiled, and stuck
about with bits of half-rotted straw. He seemed just broken from the
dead leases in David's outlawed Cave of Adullam. Unshaven, beard and
hair matted, and profuse as a corn-field beaten down by hailstorms, his
whole marred aspect was that of some wild beast; but of a royal sort,
and unsubdued by the cage.

"Aye, stare, stare! Though but last night dragged out of a ship's hold,
like a smutty tierce; and this morning out of your littered barracks
here, like a murderer; for all that, you may well stare at Ethan
Ticonderoga Allen, the unconquered soldier, by ----! You Turks never saw
a Christian before. Stare on! I am he, who, when your Lord Howe wanted
to bribe a patriot to fall down and worship him by an offer of a
major-generalship and five thousand acres of choice land in old
Vermont--(Ha! three-times-three for glorious old Vermont, and my
Green-Mountain boys! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!) I am he, I say, who
answered your Lord Howe, 'You, _you_ offer _our_ land? You are like the
devil in Scripture, offering all the kingdoms in the world, when the
d----d soul had not a corner-lot on earth! Stare on!'"

"Look you, rebel, you had best heed how you talk against General Lord
Howe," here said a thin, wasp-waisted, epauletted officer of the castle,
coming near and flourishing his sword like a schoolmaster's ferule.

"General Lord Howe? Heed how I talk of that toad-hearted king's
lick-spittle of a scarlet poltroon; the vilest wriggler in God's
worm-hole below? I tell you, that herds of red-haired devils are
impatiently snorting to ladle Lord Howe with all his gang (you included)
into the seethingest syrups of tophet's flames!"

At this blast, the wasp-waisted officer was blown backwards as from
before the suddenly burst head of a steam-boiler.

Staggering away, with a snapped spine, he muttered something about its
being beneath his dignity to bandy further words with a low-lived rebel.

"Come, come, Colonel Allen," here said a mild-looking man in a sort of
clerical undress, "respect the day better than to talk thus of what lies
beyond. Were you to die this hour, or what is more probable, be hung
next week at Tower-wharf, you know not what might become, in eternity,
of yourself."

"Reverend Sir," with a mocking bow, "when not better employed braiding
my beard, I have a little dabbled in your theologies. And let me tell
you, Reverend Sir," lowering and intensifying his voice, "that as to the
world of spirits,