ose himself to another doze. I was in
no mood of gentleness, and so, bestowing a hearty kick upon my black
"brother," I told him to show me the way to the stable at once. The
answer to this somewhat rude summons was a strange one,--he gave a kind
of grin that showed all his teeth, and made a species of hissing noise,
like "Cheet, cheet," said rapidly,--a performance I had never witnessed
before, nor, for certain reasons, have I any fancy to witness again.

"Do you hear me, black fellow?" cried I, tapping his bullet-head with
the end of my heavy whip pretty much as one does a tavern-table to
summon the waiter.

"Cheet, cheet, cheet," cried he again, but with redoubled energy.

"Confound your jargon," said I, angrily; "get up out of that, and lead
the way to the stable." This speech I accompanied by another admonition
from my foot, given, I am free to own, with all the irritable impatience
of a thirty hours' fast.

The words had scarcely passed my lips, ere the fellow sprang to his
legs, and, with a cry like the scream of an infuriated beast, dashed at
me. I threw out my arm as a guard, but, stooping beneath it, he plunged
a knife into my side, and fled. I heard the heavy bang of the great door
resound as he rushed out, and then fell to the ground, weltering in my
blood!

I made a great effort to cry out, but my voice failed me; the blood ran
fast from my wound, and a chill, sickening sensation crept over me, that
I thought must be "death." "'T is hard to die thus," was the thought
that crossed me, and it was the last effort of consciousness, ere I
swooned into insensibility.

CHAPTER XXII. THE LAZARETTO OF BEXAR

Kind-hearted reader,--you who have sympathized with so many of the
rubs that Fortune has dealt us; who have watched us with a benevolent
interest in our warfare with an adverse destiny; who have marked our
struggles, and witnessed our defeats,--will surely compassionate our sad
fate when we tell you that when the curtain next rises on our drama, it
presents us no longer what we had been!

Con Cregan, the light-hearted vagrant, paddling his lone canoe down
life's stream in joyous merriment, himself sufficing to himself, his
eyes ever upward as his hopes were onward, his crest an eagle's, and
his motto "higher," was no more. He had gone,--vanished, been dissipated
into thin air; and in his place there sat, too weak to walk, a poor
emaciated creature, with shaven head and shrunken limbs, a very wreck o