r evermore. Amen.

"'Oh blazes! how cold my face is yet. Waiter, half a pint of clear
cocktail; somethin' to warm me. Oh, that cold hand! Did you ever touch a
dead man's hand? it's awful cold, you may depend. Is there any marks on
my face? do you see the tracks of the fingers there?'

"'No, Sir,' sais I,' I can't say I do.'

"'Well, then I feel them there,' sais he, 'as plain as any thing.'

"'Stranger,' sais I, 'it was nothin' but some poor no-souled critter,
like yourself, that was skeered a'most to death, and wanted to be helped
out that's all."

"'Skeered!' said he, 'sarves him right then; he might have knowed how to
feel for other folks, and not funkify them so peskily; I don't keer if
he never gets out; but I have my doubts about its bein' a livin' human,
I tell _you_. If I hadn't a renounced the devil and all his works that
time, I don't know what the upshot would have been, for Old Scratch was
there too. I saw him as plain as I see you; he ran out afore me, and
couldn't stop or look back, as long as I said catekism. He was in his
old shape of the sarpent; he was the matter of a yard long, and as thick
round as my arm and travelled belly-flounder fashion; when I touched
land, he dodged into an eddy, and out of sight in no time. Oh, there is
no mistake, I'll take my oath of it; I see him, I did upon my soul. It
was the old gentleman hisself; he come there to cool hisself. Oh, it was
the devil, that's a fact.'

"'It was nothin' but a fresh water eel,' sais I; 'I have seen thousands
of 'em there; for the crevices of them rocks are chock full of 'em.
How can you come for to go, for to talk arter that fashion; you are
a disgrace to our great nation, you great lummokin coward, you. An
American citizen is afeerd of nothin', but a bad spekilation, or bein'
found oat.'

"Well, that posed him, he seemed kinder bothered, and looked down.

"'An eel, eh! well, it mought be an eel,' sais be, 'that's a fact.
I didn't think of that; but then if it was, it was god-mother granny
Eells, that promised I should renounce the devil and all his works, that
took that shape, and come to keep me to my bargain. She died fifty years
ago, poor old soul, and never kept company with Indgians, or niggers,
or any such trash. Heavens and airth! I don't wonder the Falls wakes the
dead, it makes such an everlastin' almighty noise, does Niagara. Waiter,
more cocktail, that last was as weak as water.'

"'Yes, Sir,' and he swallered it like w