He looked at me steadily for a moment without speaking, and then approaching close to me, said, "Parbleu! the act was very unlike your costume!" At the same time he shut the door, and drew a strong bar across it. This done, he turned to me once more--"Now for it: who are you, and what has happened to you?" "As to what I am," replied I, imitating his own abruptness, "my dress will almost save the trouble of explaining; these Albany folk, however, would make a field-preacher of me, and to escape them I took to flight." "Well, if a fellow will wear his hair that fashion, he must take the consequence," said he, drawing out my long lank locks as they hung over my shoulders. "And so you wouldn't hold forth for them; not even give them a stave of a conventical chant." He kept his eyes riveted on me as he spoke, and then seizing two pieces of stick for the firewood, he beat on the table the ran-tan-plan of the French drum. "That's the music you know best, lad, eh?--that's the air, which, if it has not led heavenward, has conducted many a brave fellow out of this world at least: do you forget it?" "Forget it! no," cried I; "but who are you; and how comes it that--that--" I stopped in confusion at the rudeness of the question I had begun. "That I stand here, half-fed, and all but naked; a barber in a land where men don't shave once a month. Parbleu! they'd come even seldomer to my shop if they knew how tempted I feel to draw the razor sharp and quick across the gullet of a fellow with a well-stocked pouch." As he continued to speak, his voice assumed a tone and cadence that sounded familiarly to my ears as I stared at him in amazement. "Not know me yet," exclaimed he, laughing; "and yet all this poverty and squalor isn't as great a disguise as your own, Tiernay. Come, lad, rub your eyes a bit, and try if you can't recognize an old comrade." "I know you, yet can not remember how or where we met," said I, in bewilderment. "I'll refresh your memory," said he, crossing his arms, and drawing himself proudly up. "If you can trace back in your mind to a certain hot and dusty day, on the Metz road, when you, a private in the seventh Hussars, were eating an onion and a slice of black bread for your dinner, a young officer, well-looking and well-mounted, cantered up, and threw you his brandy flask. Your acknowledgment of the civility showed you to be a gentleman; and the acquaintance thus opened, soon ripened into intimacy." "But he was the young Marquis de Saint Trone," said I, perfectly remembering the incident. "Or Eugene Santron, of the republican army, or the barber at Albany, without any name at all," said he, laughing. "What, Maurice, don't you know me yet?" "What, the lieutenant of my regiment! The dashing officer of Hussars!" "Just so, and as ready to resume the old skin as ever," cried he, "and brandish a weapon somewhat longer, and perhaps somewhat sharper, too, than a razor."