One of the queerest of these fallen angels was a man who called himself Barney Fisher, or the Arapipi spider. Who or what he had been the Lord only knew, but he possessed gifts that would have made him a welcome guest in any country house in the world. A superb horseman and good at every outdoor game, he was equally proficient in those indoor pastimes that make a man like himself so valuable to a hostess, who finds it so hard to find amusement for a houseful of people on a wet day. He could paint a picture worth looking at, write a song and sing it, although the libretto, if similar to the topical chants he composed for his comrades’ benefit, would not have been tolerated for a moment, dance a breakdown or jig and drink ration rum by the quart without turning a hair, besides all which he could talk fluently on any subject in the world in most of the European languages and was as good-natured and obliging as it is possible for a man to be. Over and over again he received heavy remittances to take him home and on more than one occasion took his discharge for that purpose, but it was no good, he never got farther than the nearest town, where he could cash his draft, which being done he would paint that town crimson until his last shilling was blued and then return to the troop. So used were we to these periodical absences that his horse and equipments were kept ready for him and he would be received back with open arms, one reason for which being that the said horse was such a fiend that no other man cared to groom him, much less ride him, although with Barney he was as quiet as a lamb. Yes; the Arapipi spider was a queer fish, but we had one queerer still; a tall, thin slab of a fellow who called himself Limbs, and was yclept by his comrades the Duke of Limbs. Standing over six feet three, he wore a close-shaved face, long as a child’s coffin, the features of which always seemed set with such a look of intense melancholic disappointment that the observer would at once come to the conclusion that the wretched man had just murdered his father for his wealth, and had then only found wild-cat securities. Still he was a cheery chap in his own sorrowful way, and although he was never known to laugh, or even smile, yet by his inadvertences he would cause amusement, or sometimes even trouble, by perpetrating acts which, if committed by an ordinary individual, would have stamped him as a malignant _farceur_ or a practical joker suffering from liver.