I own it was with a most intense curiosity I waited for the light to scan the features of my singular companion; nor was my satisfaction inconsiderable when, instead of the terrific-looking fellow--half bravo, half pirate--I expected, I perceived before me a man of apparently thirty-one or two, with large but handsome features and gentlemanly appearance. He had an immense beard and moustache, which united at either side of the mouth; but this, ferocious enough to one unaccustomed to it, could not take off the quiet regularity and good-humor of his manly features. He wore a large-brimmed slouched felt hat that shaded his brows, and he seemed to be dressed with some care, beneath the rough exterior of a common pilot-coat,--at least, he wore silk stockings and shoes, as if in evening-dress. These particulars I had time to note, while he unwound from his crippled hand the strips of a silk handkerchief which, stiffened and clotted with blood, bespoke a deep and severe wound. If the operation were often painful even to torture, he never winced, or permitted the slightest expression of suffering to escape him. At last the undressing was completed, and a fearful gash appeared, separating the four fingers almost entirely from the hand. The keenness of the cut showed that the weapon must have been, as the fellow averred, sharp as a razor. Perhaps the copious loss of blood had exhausted the vessels, or the tension of the bandage had closed them; for there was little bleeding, and I soon succeeded, with the aid of his cravat, in making a tolerable dressing of the wound, and by filling up the palm of the hand as I had once seen done by a country surgeon in a somewhat similar case. The pain was relieved by the gentle support afforded. "Why, you are a most accomplished vagrant!" said he, laughing, as he watched the artistic steps of my proceeding. "What's your name?--I mean, what do you go by at present? for of course a fellow like you has a score of aliases." "I have had only one name up to this," said I,--"Con Cregan." "Con Cregan! sharp and shrewd enough it sounds too!" said he. "And what line of life do you mean to follow, Master Con? for I suspect you have not been without some speculations on the subject." "I have thought of various things, sir; but how is a poor boy like me to get a chance? I feel as if I could pick up a little of most trades; but I have no money, nor any friends." "Money--friends!" exclaimed he, with a burst of bitterness quite unlike his previous careless humor. "Well, my good fellow, I had both one and the other,--more than most people are supposed to have of either; and what have they brought me to?" He held up his maimed and blood-clotted hand as he spoke this with a withering scorn in every accent.