I know what I'm a-talking about. Leroy is the invention of
Franc Paul, of the Chattanooga _Rebel_. He as good as told me so. He
said that when he wanted to stir up talk and create a sensation he had
something written about this Captain Frank Leroy. He's a paper man and
he's able to do anything the newspapers want done."

"You talk like you had gray hair," said the man that looked like a
prize-fighter; "but you're givin' away a mighty big secret. What are
you doin' it for? Say!"

"Oh, because I'm tired of all this talk about a man that doesn't live
outside of the mind of a newspaper man."

The big Irishman, who had been smoking and watching me with a shrewd
smile hovering about his mouth, began to chuckle audibly. He kept it up
so long that it attracted the attention of the company.

"What tickles you, my friend?" the burly man asked.

"Maybe ye know Franc Paul?" he inquired. His countenance was an
interrogation-point. The man answered somewhat sullenly in the
affirmative. "Is there anny risimblance bechune him an' me?"

"Not the slightest in the world," the man answered.

"Thin ye'd have a quarrel wit' his wife an' she'd have all the
advantages," said the Irishman with a laugh. "F'r no longer than the
last time I was at Chattanooga, Missus Paul says, 'It's a good thing,
Mr. O'Halloran,' she says, 'that ye're a hair's breadth taller than me
beloved husband,' she says, 'or I'd niver tell ye apart. Only the sharp
eyes av a wife or a mither,' she says, 'could pick out me husband if he
stood be your side,' she says."

"I must say," remarked the pious-looking man, "that you gentlemen were
never more mistaken in your lives when you hint that there is no such
person as Frank Leroy. I knew him when he was a boy--a beardless boy,
as you may say. In fact, his father was my next-door neighbor in
Knoxville, and I used to see Frank reading old Brownlow's paper."

"Don't think ut!" replied the Irishman, and with that all joined in the
conversation and I heard more of the perilous adventures and
hair-breadth escapes of Captain Frank Leroy than you could put in a
book. It seemed that his identity was a mystery, but he was none the
less a hero in men's minds because his very existence had been called
in question; for people will hug delusions to their bosoms in the face
of religion itself, as we all know.

The door of an inner room was open, and I could hear a conversation
going on. One of the participants was the stuttering m