He invited me the night I met him to go with him on one of his wanderings. A Haroun-al-Rashed adventure it seemed to me. I closed with the offer at once and asked how I should dress. I had an idea that I must wear a false beard and at least provide myself with a stiletto and a revolver, and be ready to use them. "Why, you will do just as you are," he said. "I shall go just as I am." He did not know it, but he did not tell the truth. He did not change his clothes, but at the first turn into side streets he changed his bearing, the music of his voice, his vocabulary. I could scarce understand one word in five. He was a finished actor; Sir Richard Burton, of course, was his ideal; always in the Under World he passed unsuspected; always from the start of our tramping together he had to explain me. I could never pick up the manner, and indeed was too amused to try; his habit was to explain me in whispers as a dupe, and I had once to rescue him from a fight brought on because he would not consent to sharing with his interlocutor the picking of my pockets. I had more than once to rescue him; he had the height and body of a slim boy of fourteen, but just to see what the beast would do he would have teased my lord the elephant, and he took a drubbing as naturally as any other hardship. A finished actor, I have written; and an actor knowing to his fingertips many parts. One instance must suffice. I figured usually--I have said it--as a dupe. I was on this night cast for the part of an accomplice, and he for the part of a bold, bad breaker of safes and doors and windows. The character was conceived in an instant. An instant before we were two very tired, very quiet men, strolling home through the Bowery in a bitter, drizzling rain at three o'clock in the morning. "Say, mate, what's the chanst for a cup o' coffee?" The speaker was a fully togged out A. B. for the service of the U. S., and on his cap were the letters _Oregon_. To me the disguise was perfect. He did a bit of the sailor's hornpipe on that slippery, glistening pavement where the rain fell and froze under electric lights. "The chances are good," said Flynt; and he led the way into a house near by. The front of the house was as unlighted as respectability demands a house should be at three o'clock in the morning; but there was a dim light at a side door. We went in under the dim light and found music and dancing, and little tables at which we could be served with almost anything except coffee. The "Oregon" took "Whisky straight--Hunter's if you've got it." "Out at the Philippines?" asked Flynt. "Sure thing." "Came round the Cape?" "Did I? Say, I'll tell you about that." "Battle of Santiago?" The sailor was in the midst of the battle of Santiago when Flynt smiled and said quietly: "Have you seen the Lake Shore push yet?" To me, at that time, the words were pure enigma, but the color faded out of the sailorman's cheeks, and he dropped back in his chair and said: