hen Dawson heard Lieutenant Doyle's drunken
voice he said there'd be trouble getting him home, and he'd better fetch
Mrs. Doyle, and while he was gone Lascelles came out, excited, and threw
down a twenty-dollar bill and ordered more Krug and some brandy, and
there was still loud talk, and when Bonelli carried in the bottles
Doyle was sitting back in a chair, held down by the other officer, who
was laughing at him, but nevertheless had a knife in hand,--a long,
sharp, two-edged knife,--and Doyle was calling him names, and was very
drunk, and soon after they all went out into the rear court, and Doyle
made more noise, and the cab drove away around the corner, going down
the levee through the pouring rain, one man on the box with the driver.
That was the last he saw. Then Mrs. Doyle came in mad, and demanded her
husband, and they found him reeling about the dark court, swearing and
muttering, and Dawson and she took him off between them. This must have
been before eleven o'clock; and that was absolutely all he knew.

Then Mr. Allerton had told his story again, without throwing the
faintest light on the proceedings; and the hack-driver was found, and
frankly and fully told his: that Lascelles and another gentleman hired
him about eight o'clock to drive them down to the former's place, which
they said was several squares above the barracks. He said that he would
have to charge them eight dollars such a night anywhere below the old
cotton-press, where the pavement ended. But then they had delayed
starting nearly an hour, and took another gentleman with them, and when
driven by the storm to shelter at the Pelican saloon, three squares
below where the pavement ended, and he asked for his money, saying he
dare go no farther in the darkness and the flood, the Frenchman wouldn't
pay, because he hadn't taken them all the way. He pointed out that he
had to bring another gentleman and had to wait a long time, and demanded
his eight dollars. The other gentleman, whom he found to be one of the
officers at the barracks, slipped a bill into his hand and said it was
all he had left, and if it wasn't enough he'd pay him the next time he
came to town. But the others were very angry, and called him an Irish
thief, and then the big soldier in uniform said he wouldn't have a man
abused because he was Irish, and Lieutenant Waring, as he understood the
name of this other officer to be, told him, the witness, to slip out and
say no more, that he'd