a grand device which might have puzzled a whole college of heralds to
interpret,--a combination of eagles and banners and shields, coruscating
with stars and radiant with stripes. But more suggestive than any of
these shams was the stern reality of a purple scar which ran round the
back of his neck, from ear to ear. More than one man must have been
hurt, when that scar was made.

Notwithstanding the bull-dog projection of this formidable giant's lower
jaw, there sometimes beamed on his face that good-natured expression
often observable in men whose unusual muscular development places them
on a footing of physical superiority to those with whom they shoulder
along the road of life. When the runners "chaffed" him, nevertheless,
it was in a mild way, and with manifest respect for his muscle,--a
sentiment in no way diminished when he suddenly clutched one of the
least cautious among them by the nape of the neck, and held him out at
arm's-length, for some seconds, over the drowny water that kept lazily
licking at the green moss on the old stakes of the rickety pier.

Even unto the Prince of Darkness, saith proverbial philosophy, let us
concede his due. If, then, a single ray of good illuminates at some
happy moment the dark spirit of these roughs, let it be recorded with
that bare, unfledged truth which is so much better a bird than uncandor
with the finest of feathers upon him.

Feeling his way into the circle with a stick, there came a poor blind
man, of diminutive stature, squeezing beneath his left arm a suffocating
accordion, which, every now and then, as he stumbled against the uneven
planks of the wharf, gave a querulous squeak, doleful in its cadence as
the feeble quavers evoked by Mr. William Davidge, comedian, from
the asthmatic clarionet of Jem Bags, in the farce of the "Wandering