"Never you mind whether I was or whether I wasn't. Do you know what it cost to get you out of prison?"
"No."
"Well, near upon a thousand dollars, my lad."
"And you paid this money! You, an utter stranger to me, bribed my jailers!"
"Never you mind about that, I say again; those that paid the money for you didn't grudge a farthing of it. As to being a stranger, perhaps I'm not quite that."
"You know me, then?"
"Fifteen years ago I knew a little, curly-haired, black-eyed chap, who used to play about the gardens of a white-walled villa on the banks of the Amazon, and I fancy that you and he are pretty near relations."
"You knew me in my childhood; you knew me in the lifetime of my earliest and dearest benefactor."
"I did. It was only last night that I came ashore, and the first thing I heard in New Orleans was, that Mr. Paul Lisimon had been arrested for the robbery of his employer, one of the land sharks your genteel folks call lawyers. Now, we seamen are not fond of that breed, so I wasn't sorry to hear that for once a lawyer had been robbed himself, instead of robbing other people, so I asked who this Paul Lisimon was that had been too many guns for his employer, and they told me that he was a young Mexican, who had been brought up by Don Juan Moraquitos. Now, I happen to know a good deal of Don Juan Moraquitos, and I had never heard before of Paul Lisimon; but I had heard of a little curly haired lad that was once a great favorite with Don Tomaso Crivelli, and Don Tomaso had been a good friend to me. So that's why your jailer was bribed, and why you stand a free man in the streets of New Orleans this morning."
"My generous friend," exclaimed Paul, "this is all so much a mystery to me that I know not how to thank you for your goodness."