t de yer want?"

This was a voice that reached me as I passed through the dark corner of
the Faubourg Treme. Then followed some exclamations in French; a
scuffle ensued, a pistol went off, and I heard the same voice again
calling out:

"Four till one! Injuns! Murder! Help, hyur!"

I ran up. It was very dark; but the glimmer of a distant lamp enabled
me to perceive a man out in the middle of the street, defending himself
against four others. He was a man of giant size, and flourished a
bright weapon, which I took to be a bowie-knife, while his assailants
struck at him on all sides with sticks and stilettoes. A small boy ran
back and forth upon the banquette, calling for help.

Supposing it to be some street quarrel, I endeavoured to separate the
parties by remonstrance. I rushed between them, holding out my cane;
but a sharp cut across the knuckles, which I had received from one of
the small men, together with his evident intention to follow it up,
robbed me of all zest for pacific meditation; and, keeping my eye upon
the one who had cut me, I drew a pistol (I could not otherwise defend
myself), and fired. The man fell dead in his tracks, without a groan.
His comrades, hearing me re-cock, took to their heels, and disappeared
up a neighbouring alley.

The whole scene did not occupy the time you have spent in reading this
relation of it. One minute I was plodding quietly homeward; the next, I
stood in the middle of the street; beside me a stranger of gigantic
proportions; at my feet a black mass of dead humanity, half doubled up
in the mud as it had fallen; on the banquette, the slight, shivering
form of a boy; while above and around were silence and darkness.

I was beginning to fancy the whole thing a dream, when the voice of the
man at my side dispelled this illusion.

"Mister," said he, placing his arms akimbo, and facing me, "if ye'll
tell me yur name, I ain't a-gwine to forgit it. No, Bob Linkin ain't
that sorter."

"What! Bob Lincoln? Bob Lincoln of the Peaks?"

In the voice I had recognised a celebrated mountain trapper, and an old
acquaintance, whom I had not met for several years.

"Why, Lord save us from Injuns! it ain't you, Cap'n Haller? May I be
dog-goned if it ain't! Whooray!--whoop! I knowed it warn't no
store-keeper fired that shot. Haroo! whar are yur, Jack?"

"Here I am," answered the boy, from the pavement.

"Kum hyur, then. Ye ain't badly skeert, air yur?"

"No," firml