a "gruel"
request to convey himself across that border. It is needless to say that
Mr. Kain accepted the _douceur_ and stood not upon the order of his going.

Arrived in that sun-burnt clime, one of his first acts, according to the
Texas journalists, was to involve himself in a railroad smash-up, with a
loss of his dexter leg and a head, but as he was shortly afterwards
advertised to appear in a Greaser circus combination as a tight-rope
performer, it is apprehended that some of the facts were suppressed.
Terminating his engagement in debt to the managers, he reached the city of
New Orleans by "hook or crook," or both, and more of the former, and a
good deal of the latter, and was last heard of as one of the inmates of
the famous pest-house of that city. How he escaped from this institution,
and resumed his peripatetic career, would doubtless make a very pretty
romance, but we must be pardoned, if we assert that we know no more about
this _konfounded, krooked konundrum_ than does the reader, and drop our
quill.

CHAPTER XX.

CONCLUSION.

The Author has no Explanations to Offer--Such as it is, it is--The
Chief of Two Reasons for Holding it in Esteem--A Whim that has been
Gratified--Mischievous Results of Confiding a Secret to One Female
Acquaintance instead of Fifty--Can anything be more Ridiculous than
to Suppose that there is a Word of Fiction Connected with the
foregoing Chapters?--Lakeside Publishers--The Public Invited to
Pocket their Scruples and Read History--Finale.

Positively, we must depart from a time-honored custom of the bookmaker, as
we confess with blushes that we have no confidences to exchange with the
reader, no explanations to offer to the public, and no fine epigrams to
repeat concerning that aged word--farewell. Such as it is, it is, and we
have no idea of making it better, by any such _supra legem_ performance.
If the reader is satisfied, we are; and if he is not, and will signify
that remarkable conclusion to the author, he shall have his money back,
together with fair wages for such portion of his valuable time as may have
been squandered on its pages. We could not think of taking such a mean
advantage of any one's talent for promiscuous reading, and beg to repeat
this announcement as a request.

If anybody's party-feeling has been ruffled, it may be taken in some sense
as a natural conclusion, for, besides having none ourselves, and treating
the