these wounded fingers of
mine, for they begin to smart with the cold night air."

"Wait an instant," cried he; "we are safe now, so you may light this
lantern;" and he took from his pocket a small and most elegantly
fashioned lantern, which he immediately lighted.

I own it was with a most intense curiosity I waited for the light to
scan the features of my singular companion; nor was my satisfaction
inconsiderable when, instead of the terrific-looking fellow--half bravo,
half pirate--I expected, I perceived before me a man of apparently
thirty-one or two, with large but handsome features and gentlemanly
appearance. He had an immense beard and moustache, which united at
either side of the mouth; but this, ferocious enough to one unaccustomed
to it, could not take off the quiet regularity and good-humor of his
manly features. He wore a large-brimmed slouched felt hat that shaded
his brows, and he seemed to be dressed with some care, beneath the rough
exterior of a common pilot-coat,--at least, he wore silk stockings and
shoes, as if in evening-dress. These particulars I had time to
note, while he unwound from his crippled hand the strips of a silk
handkerchief which, stiffened and clotted with blood, bespoke a deep and
severe wound.

If the operation were often painful even to torture, he never winced, or
permitted the slightest expression of suffering to escape him. At last
the undressing was completed, and a fearful gash appeared, separating
the four fingers almost entirely from the hand. The keenness of the cut
showed that the weapon must have been, as the fellow averred, sharp as
a razor. Perhaps the copious loss of blood had exhausted the vessels,
or the tension of the bandage had closed them; for there was little
bleeding, and I soon succeeded, with the aid of his cravat, in making a
tolerable dressing of the wound, and by filling up the palm of the hand
as I had once seen done by a country surgeon in a somewhat similar case.
The pain was relieved by the gentle support afforded.

"Why, you are a most accomplished vagrant!" said he, laughing, as he
watched the artistic steps of my proceeding. "What's your name?--I mean,
what do you go by at present? for of course a fellow like you has a
score of aliases."

"I have had only one name up to this," said I,--"Con Cregan."

"Con Cregan! sharp and shrewd enough it sounds too!" said he. "And what
line of life do you mean to follow, Master Con? for I suspect you have