"This may be Texan gratitude, Fra Miguel," said I to myself, "but certainly you never brought it from your own country." Meanwhile the negro, after lighting the others upstairs, returned to where I was, and perhaps not impressed by any high notions of my quality, or too sleepy to think much about the matter, sat down on a stone bench, and looked very much as if about to compose himself to another doze. I was in no mood of gentleness, and so, bestowing a hearty kick upon my black "brother," I told him to show me the way to the stable at once. The answer to this somewhat rude summons was a strange one,--he gave a kind of grin that showed all his teeth, and made a species of hissing noise, like "Cheet, cheet," said rapidly,--a performance I had never witnessed before, nor, for certain reasons, have I any fancy to witness again. "Do you hear me, black fellow?" cried I, tapping his bullet-head with the end of my heavy whip pretty much as one does a tavern-table to summon the waiter. "Cheet, cheet, cheet," cried he again, but with redoubled energy. "Confound your jargon," said I, angrily; "get up out of that, and lead the way to the stable." This speech I accompanied by another admonition from my foot, given, I am free to own, with all the irritable impatience of a thirty hours' fast. The words had scarcely passed my lips, ere the fellow sprang to his legs, and, with a cry like the scream of an infuriated beast, dashed at me. I threw out my arm as a guard, but, stooping beneath it, he plunged a knife into my side, and fled. I heard the heavy bang of the great door resound as he rushed out, and then fell to the ground, weltering in my blood! I made a great effort to cry out, but my voice failed me; the blood ran fast from my wound, and a chill, sickening sensation crept over me, that I thought must be "death." "'T is hard to die thus," was the thought that crossed me, and it was the last effort of consciousness, ere I swooned into insensibility. CHAPTER XXII. THE LAZARETTO OF BEXAR Kind-hearted reader,--you who have sympathized with so many of the rubs that Fortune has dealt us; who have watched us with a benevolent interest in our warfare with an adverse destiny; who have marked our struggles, and witnessed our defeats,--will surely compassionate our sad fate when we tell you that when the curtain next rises on our drama, it presents us no longer what we had been! Con Cregan, the light-hearted vagrant, paddling his lone canoe down life's stream in joyous merriment, himself sufficing to himself, his eyes ever upward as his hopes were onward, his crest an eagle's, and his motto "higher," was no more. He had gone,--vanished, been dissipated into thin air; and in his place there sat, too weak to walk, a poor emaciated creature, with shaven head and shrunken limbs, a very wreck of humanity, pale, sallow, and miserable as fever and flannel could paint him.