except the nuns. I need so much to go away. I am dying here."

Coming up my trail a few days later, I found on my _paepae_ a
shabbily dressed little bag-of-bones of a white man, with a dirty
gray beard and a harsh voice like that of Baufré. He had a note to
me from Le Brunnec, introducing M. Lemoal, born in Brest, a
naturalized American. The note was sealed, and I put it carefully
away before turning to my visitor. It read:

"CHER CITOYEN:

"I send you a specimen of the Marquesan beaches, so that you can
have a little fun. This fellow have a very tremendous life. He is an
old sailor, pirate, gold-miner, Chinese-hanger, thief, robber,
honest-man, baker, trader; in a word, an interesting type. With the
aid of several glasses of wine I have put him in the mood to talk
delightfully."

A low-browed man was Lemoal, sapped and ruthless, but certainly he
had adventured.

Was the Bella Union Theater still there in Frisco? Did they still
fight in Bottle Meyers, and was his friend Tasset on the police
force yet? His memories of San Francisco ante-dated mine. He had
been a hoodlum there, and had helped to hang Chinese. He had gone to
Tahiti in 1870 and made a hundred thousand francs keeping a bakery.
That fortune had lasted him during two years' tour of the world.

"Now I'm bust," he said bitterly. "Now I got no woman, no children,
no friends, and I don't want none. I am by myself and damn everybody!"