"Why? Why, indeed, such a question from an old detective like you astonishes me: it wouldn't, though, if a woman, or a fool, asked it," said he, giving me a curious wink. "Don't you know yet that the Mississippi is infested with old gamblers rich as Jews, and who can't give up their pious trade to save their lives? Come along." And he took me down St. Louis Street a ways, and stepped into a side street, and standing before a door a moment, said, "Give me the finger, and follow me." We mounted a couple of flights of dirty stairs, and my friend opened a door into a sort of anatomical museum of old gypsum and wax casts, and all sorts of small sculptural devices. "Mr. Cancemi at home?" asked my friend of a weird-looking lad, whose hands were besmeared with the plaster he was working. "Si signore," (yes, sir), was the reply; "but my fader is much sick, questo giorno" (to-day). "But I must see him a moment. Won't you go ask him to come down?" The family, it seemed, occupied rooms in the loft above. The boy hurried off, and presently the father came down with him, almost too feeble to walk. "Cancemi," said my friend, "you are sick; but I've brought you some medicine that will cheer you up at once." "Ah, Dio," exclaimed the old Italian, "I vish it be so. I am much ammalato (sick). What have you brought?--Tell quick." "See here!" said my friend; "did you ever see that before?" producing the finger. The old Italian seemed a new man as his eyes dilated at the sight with wonder, and he went into raptures over the matter, the reason for which I could not understand, and in his broken English muttered a thousand exclamations of surprise and joy. Of course he identified the finger as the one he had made for the "villain-scoundrel Legate." Legate, I found, had never paid the Italian for his skillful handiwork, and he had been promised a portion of the reward, if my friend should succeed in earning it--hence his joy. We left the old Italian soon, and proceeded to the boat, where we confronted Jacobs, and made him acknowledge his identity with Legate. My business was made known to him. He lay on the boat for two days, until her return trip, when we had him carefully taken to a private hospital, where he could, beyond possibility of escape, be confined, and awaited his slow recovery under the best medical and other attendance we could procure. I telegraphed to my parties in New York, one of whom came on directly, reaching New Orleans within ten days from that time; and before two weeks had passed from the time of his arrival, we had settled matters with the now penitent, because caged, Legate; and the New Orleans parties who had offered the reward were now called in by my detective friend, and settled their affairs with him by accepting a mortgage he held for twenty-five thousand dollars on a sugar plantation in the Opelousas country, paying the reward to my friend, and losing nothing in the result.