The affrighted porter gave an unearthly yelp, at which Ephraim started up in terror. Whereupon the Irishman seized one of the negro’s boots from the floor by the foot of the bed, and fell to beating the supposed Devil over the head with all his might. The attack was so sudden that Ephraim never thought of defence, but, springing to his feet, fled precipitately down the six flights of stairs, out into the middle of the street, crying, “Watch, watch!” at the top of his voice. Here a policeman came along, and took poor Ephraim off to the station-house just as he was, and in spite of all his protestations of innocence. The next morning Mr. Booker carried his clothes to the unfortunate negro, and brought him back to the hotel. CHAPTER V. THE LAST OF THE “BOOKER TROUPE.” In the course of time the “Booker Troupe” was disbanded, and Ephraim, as well as ourselves, was, in green-room parlance, out of an engagement. I never saw him or Lynch afterward. Mr. Edwin Deaves, as I have intimated, is an industrious maker of wood-cuts and painter of transparencies and theatrical illusions in San Francisco. He was the gentlemanly “middle man” and barytone of this company. I never met him professionally after our disbanding. He went to California, I believe, with the late Samuel Wells, in the same troupe with Messrs. Birch and Backus. Deaves was a very handsome man in the old days of our association. His jet-black hair never required a wig at that time, except when he desired to personate some terrible _impresario_ in burlesque opera. Then he would invest himself in one of buffalo-robe, and would roar with such unexampled fierceness that our tin horns would ring again with the mere echoes of his powerful voice. He was a man of great versatility. I would not like to say exactly what he could not do, from the invention of a patent soap to the plotting of a new pantomime. The words and music of some of the most widely known of the old negro melodies are of his composition. But as I saw him last with his large family around him, at San Francisco, it was evident that, if he should ever go back from his present contented, peaceful life into the checkered uncertainties of cork opera, he would have to wear a wig, unless he confined himself exclusively to “old man’s parts.” His hair has long since faded, and he would, I fear, have also to use a tin horn himself, to produce the startling echoes of his whilom unaided voice. * * * * *