laining; these Albany folk, however,
would make a field-preacher of me, and to escape them I took to flight.'

'Well, if a fellow will wear his hair that fashion, he must take the
consequence,' said he, drawing out my long lank locks as they hung over
my shoulders. 'And so you wouldn't hold forth for them--not even give
them a stave of a conventicle chant.' He kept his eyes riveted on me
as he spoke, and then seizing two pieces of stick from the firewood, he
beat on the table the rataplan of the French drum. 'That's the music
you know best, lad, eh?--that's the air, which, if it has not led
heavenward, has conducted many a brave fellow out of this world at
least. Do you forget it?'

'Forget it! no,' cried I;' but who are you; and how comes it
that--that----' I stopped in confusion at the rudeness of the question I
had begun. 'That I stand here, half fed, and all but naked--a barber in
a land where men don't shave once a month. _Parbleu!_ they'd come even
seldomer to my shop if they knew how tempted I feel to draw the razor
sharp and quick across the gullet of a fellow with a well-stocked
pouch.'

As he continued to speak, his voice assumed a tone and cadence that
sounded familiar to my ears as I stared at him in amazement.

'Not know me yet!' exclaimed he, laughing; 'and yet all this poverty and
squalor isn't as great a disguise as your own, Tiernay. Come, lad, rub
your eyes a bit, and try if you can't recognise an old comrade.'

'I know you, yet cannot remember how or where we met,' said I, in
bewilderment.

'I'll refresh your memory,' said he, crossing his arms, and drawing
himself proudly up. 'If you can trace back in your mind to a certain
hot and dusty day, on the Metz road, when you, a private in the Ninth
Hussars, were eating an onion and a slice of black bread for your
dinner, a young officer, well looking and well mounted, cantered up and
threw you his brandy flask. Your acknowledgment of the civility showed
you to be a gentleman; and the acquaintance thus opened soon ripened
into intimacy.'

'But he was the young Marquis de Saint-Trone,' said I, perfectly
remembering the incident.

'Or Eugene Santron, of the republican army, or the barber at Albany,
without any name at all,' said he, laughing. 'What, Maurice, don't you
know me yet?'

'What! the lieutenant of my regiment? The dashing officer of hussars?'

'Just so, and as ready to resume the old skin as ever,' cried he, 'and
brandish a weapon somew