That gentleman who was official head of the coterie of revenue hunters to which I was assigned was peculiarly the man unusual. His true name, if I ever heard it, I’ve forgot; among us of the Customs, he was known as Betelnut Jack. Lorns took me into his presence and made us known to one another early in my revenue career. I had been told stories of this man by both Lorns and Quin. They deeply reverenced him for his virtues of courage and cunning, and the praises of Betelnut Jack were constant in their mouths. Betelnut Jack was at his home in the Bowery. Jack, in years gone by, had been a hardy member of one of those Volunteer fire companies which in that hour notably augmented the perils of an urban life. Jack was a doughty fighter, and with a speaking trump in one hand and a spanner-wrench in the other, had done deeds of daring whereof one might still hear the echo. And he became for these strong-hand reasons a tower of strength in politics; and obtained that eminence in the Customs which was his when first we met. Betelnut Jack received Lorns and myself in his dingy small coop of a parlor. He was unmarried--a popular theory in accounting for this being that he’d been crossed in love in his youth. Besides the parlor, Jack’s establishment contained only one room, a bedroom it was, a shadow larger than the bed. Betelnut Jack himself was wiry and dark, and with a face which, while showing marks of former wars, shone the seat of kindly good-humor. There had been an actor, Chanfrau, who played “Mose, the Fireman.” Betelnut Jack resembled in dress his Bowery brother of the stage. His soiled silk hat stood on a dresser. He wore a long skirted coat, a red shirt, a belt which upheld--in a manner so absent-minded that one feared for the consequences--his trousers; these latter garments in their terminations were tucked inside the gaudy tops of calfskin boots; small and wrinkleless these, and fitting like a glove, with the yellow seams of the soles each day carefully re-yellowed to the end that they be admired of men. Betelnut Jack’s dark hair, a shade of gray streaking it in places, was crisp and wavy; and a long curl, carefully twisted and oiled, was brought down as low as the angle of his jaw just forward of each ear. “Be honest, young man!” said Betelnut Jack, at the close of a lecture concerning my duties; “be honest! But if you must take wrong money, take enough each time to pay for the loss of your job. Do you see this?” And Jack’s hand fell on a large morocco-bound copy of “Josephus” which lay on his table. “Well, Lorns will tell you what stories I look for in that.”