ight country-wagon, the man
offering no resistance, and drove to the tavern, where, his exhaustion
being so evident, a glass of whiskey was administered to him. He
afterwards spoke a few words in German, which no one understood. At the
almshouse, to which he was transported the same evening, he refused to
answer the customary questions, although he appeared to understand
them. The physician was obliged to use a slight degree of force in
administering nourishment and medicine, but neither was of any avail.
The man died within twenty-four hours after being received. His pockets
were empty, but two small leathern wallets were found under his pillow;
and these formed the package which the director left in my charge. They
were full of papers in a foreign language, he said, and he supposed I
might be able to ascertain the stranger's name and home from them.

I took up the wallets, which were worn and greasy from long service,
opened them, and saw that they were filled with scraps, fragments, and
folded pieces of paper, nearly every one of which had been carried for
a long time loose in the pocket. Some were written in pen and ink,
and some in pencil, but all were equally brown, worn, and unsavory in
appearance. In turning them over, however, my eye was caught by some
slips in the Russian character, and three or four notes in French;
the rest were German. I laid aside "Pitaval" at once, emptied all
the leathern pockets carefully, and set about examining the pile of
material.

I first ran rapidly through the papers to ascertain the dead man's name,
but it was nowhere to be found. There were half a dozen letters, written
on sheets folded and addressed in the fashion which prevailed before
envelopes were invented; but the name was cut out of the address in
every case. There was an official permit to embark on board a Bremen
steamer, mutilated in the same way; there was a card photograph, from
which the face had been scratched by a penknife. There were Latin
sentences; accounts of expenses; a list of New York addresses, covering
eight pages; and a number of notes, written either in Warsaw or Breslau.
A more incongruous collection I never saw, and I am sure that had it not
been for the train of thought I was pursuing when the director called
upon me, I should have returned the papers to him without troubling my
head with any attempt to unravel the man's story.

The evidence, however, that he had endeavored to hide his life, had b