e Southern face. Nevertheless,
he greeted me with more than his usual serene cordiality, and I
remembered that he looked up with a half-puzzled, half-amused expression
at the rosy morning sky as he walked a few steps with me down the
deserted street. I could not help saying that I was astonished to
see him up so early, and he admitted that it was a break in his usual
habits, but added with a smiling significance I afterwards remembered
that it was "an even chance if he did it again." As we neared the street
corner a man in a buggy drove up impatiently. In spite of the driver's
evident haste, my handsome acquaintance got in leisurely, and, lifting
his glossy hat to me with a pleasant smile, was driven away. I have
a very lasting recollection of his face and figure as the buggy
disappeared down the empty street. I never saw him again. It was not
until a week later that I knew that an hour after he left me that
morning he was lying dead in a little hollow behind the Mission
Dolores--shot through the heart in a duel for which he had risen so
early.

I recall another incident of that period, equally characteristic, but
happily less tragic in sequel. I was in the restaurant one morning
talking to my cousin when a man entered hastily and said something to
him in a hurried whisper. My cousin contracted his eyebrows and uttered
a suppressed oath. Then with a gesture of warning to the man he crossed
the room quietly to a table where a regular habitue of the restaurant
was lazily finishing his breakfast. A large silver coffee-pot with a
stiff wooden handle stood on the table before him. My cousin leaned over
the guest familiarly and apparently made some hospitable inquiry as
to his wants, with his hand resting lightly on the coffee-pot handle.
Then--possibly because, my curiosity having been excited, I was watching
him more intently than the others--I saw what probably no one else
saw--that he deliberately upset the coffee-pot and its contents over
the guest's shirt and waistcoat. As the victim sprang up with
an exclamation, my cousin overwhelmed him with apologies for his
carelessness, and, with protestations of sorrow for the accident,
actually insisted upon dragging the man upstairs into his own private
room, where he furnished him with a shirt and waistcoat of his own. The
side door had scarcely closed upon them, and I was still lost in wonder
at what I had seen, when a man entered from the street. He was one of
the desperate