We shook hands with all the cordiality of old comrades, meeting far away from home, and in a land of strangers; and although each was full of curiosity to learn the other's history, a kind of reserve held back the inquiry, till Santron said, "My confession is soon made, Maurice; I left the service in the Meuse, to escape being shot. One day, on returning from a field manoeuvre, I discovered that my portmanteau had been opened, and a number of letters and papers taken out. They were part of a correspondence I held with old General Lamarre, about the restoration of the Bourbons, a subject, I'm certain, that half the officers in the army were interested in, and, even to Bonaparte himself, deeply implicated in too. No matter, _my_ treason, as they called it, was too flagrant, and I had just twenty minutes' start of the order which was issued for my arrest, to make my escape into Holland. There I managed to pass several months in various disguises, part of the time being employed as a Dutch spy, and actually charged with an order to discover tidings of myself, until I finally got away in an Antwerp schooner, to New York. From that time my life has been nothing but a struggle, a hard one, too, with actual want, for in this land of enterprise and activity, mere intelligence, without some craft or calling, will do nothing. "I tried fifty things--to teach riding, and when I mounted into the saddle, I forgot everything but my own enjoyment, and caracolled, and plunged, and passaged, till the poor beast hadn't a leg to stand on; fencing, and I got into a duel with a rival teacher, and ran him through the neck, and was obliged to fly from Halifax; French, I made love to my pupil, a pretty looking Dutch fraulein, whose father didn't smile on our affection; and so on I descended from a dancing-master to a waiter, a _laquais de place_, and at last settled down as a barber, which brilliant speculation I had just determined to abandon this very night; for to-morrow morning, Maurice, I start for New York and France again; ay, boy, and you'll go with me. This is no land for either of us." "But I have found happiness, at least contentment, here," said I, gravely. "What! play the hypocrite with an old comrade! shame on you, Maurice," cried he. "It is these confounded locks have perverted the boy," added he, jumping up; and before I knew what he was about, he had shorn my hair, in two quick cuts of the scissors, close to the head. "There," said he, throwing the cut-off hair toward me, "there lies all your saintship; depend upon it, boy, they'd hunt you out of the settlement if you came back to them cropped in this fashion." "But you return to certain death, Santron," said I; "your crime is too recent to be forgiven or forgotten."