On the next morning he was walking near the Court House, when a man accosted him, touching his hat with one hand, and holding out the other in the way of friendly salutation. Morton, however, was at a loss to recognize him. He had an air which may most conveniently be described as raffish, a hat set on one side of his head, and a good-natured, easy, devil-may-care face.
"Richards is my name," said the stranger. "I met you at Paris, just before you went into Austria."
This was quite enough. Morton, who had repeatedly revolved all the circumstances connected with his arrest, at once recalled the accident by which he had discovered Richards and Vinal, on their way together to visit Speyer. Morton determined to cultivate this new acquaintance; which, however, seemed likely to grow without much tillage.
"I went on two or three excursions about the city with you, Mr. Vinal, and the rest. Perhaps you have not forgotten it."
"Not in the least; but you are changed since then."
"Yes," said Richards, touching the place where his moustaches had once grown, "I cut them off when I went into practice here in Boston. I found they were ruining my character as a professional man."
"How long were you in Paris after I saw you?"
"Two years, off and on. I wish I were there now." And taking Morton's arm, he proceeded to catechize him touching his imprisonment and escape, of which he said he had first read in the New York Herald. Morton satisfied his curiosity, taking care to give him no suspicion of Speyer's connection with the affair, and allowing him to infer that the arrest was caused by an accidental concurrence of suspicious circumstances. Richards, at the end, broke out into a savage, red republican tirade against Metternich and the Austrian government.
"By the way," said Morton, when his companion's heat had subsided, "do you happen to remember a man called Speyer, or something like it,—a republican propagandist, at Paris? I believe you knew him."
"I never knew any body else," replied Richards, adopting a cis-Atlantic figure of speech for which rhetoricians have as yet found no name.