"Oh, you cannot place me, eh?" laughed Rowan, who was getting fairly soothed and mellowed by his creditable substitute for duelling. "Well, I am a conductor on the —— Railroad, which you know has its terminus in Chicago, and I am off on a couple of months leave of absence from the Company. As to experience, I suppose that I may have had a little of it. I have been a civil-engineer, employed at laying out some of the worst roads in the West, and of course laying them out the worst. Have crossed the plains to California twice, and back again, including a look at Brigham and his wives at Salt Lake City, very nearly getting my throat cut, I fancy, in that latter operation. Did a little at gold-mining, for a short time, but soon quitted it out of deference to a constitutional backache when stooping. Have been here at the East a good many times, and once lived in New York, (a great deal worse place than Salt Lake City, and with more polygamy!) for a twelvemonth, telegraphing. Once ran down to Santa Fe with a train, and came very near to being speared by the Comanches. Then concluded to stay among those amiable savages for a while, to learn to ride, and spent six months in the study. No man knows how to ride a horse—by the way—except an Arab (I take the word of the travellers for that, as I have never been across), a Comanche or an Arapahoe, or some one they have taught. There, have I told you enough?"
"Humph!—yes," answered the lawyer, eying the strange compound with unavoidable admiration and no little wonder. "Yes, except one thing."
"And that is about this scar?"
"I confess that my curiosity lay in that direction!" laughed Townsend. "I think that scar has not been long healed—that you have been taking a turn in the present war."
"Yes, a short one," said the Illinoisan, "and that scar is one mark of it. I was a private in the ranks of the Ninth Illinois for a few months last year, and got pretty badly slashed with a Mississippi bowie-knife, with Grant, two or three days before they took Fort Donelson. They took it—I did not—I suppose that I did not amount to much at about that period, with a little hack in the jugular that came pretty near letting out life and blood together!"
Before this conversation had concluded, and long before the specified five games were accomplished, half a dozen persons from the hotel, male and female, came strolling in. Among them was Captain Hector Coles, with Margaret Hayley upon his arm. They stood at the head of the alley, looking at the game; and Townsend, as he was about to make one of his most difficult rolls, recognized the lady and her slight nod and was sufficiently agitated by the presence of that peculiar spectator, to miss his aim entirely and roll the ball off into the gutter—a fact which did not escape the quick eye of the Captain.
Directly, as the game still went on, some conversation occurred between the lady and her attendant, which, if overheard, might have produced a still more decided trembling in the nerves of the ten-pin player.
"I know that I have seen that face before, more than once, and not in Cincinnati," the Captain said. "I believe that he is a Philadelphian, and that his name is no more Horace Townsend than mine is Jenkins."
"What motive could any one possibly have for coming to a place like this in disguise and with a feigned name?" asked Margaret Hayley.
"Humph!" said the Captain, in a tone by no means good-humored, though it was low, as the previous words had been, "there are plenty of men who find it necessary to disguise names and faces now-a-days, for the very best of reasons."