“It’s a lie,” was the brief rejoinder.  “I don’t believe any thing of the kind.”

“You d——­d vagabond,” cried Mr. Brown, snatching the long gun from my hand and presenting it to the fellow’s heart, “I have a strong desire to blow your liver out.”

“You wouldn’t shoot a fellow with his own gun, would you?” the impudent scamp asked, without manifesting any serious apprehension of our doing so.

“Well, no, I hardly think that would be just,” replied Mr. Brown, lowering the muzzle of the gun, and beginning to think that he had met with a strange customer, whom it was better to conciliate than to cross.

“Come, tell a feller who you is,” the red-haired genius remarked “do you belong to Buskin’s gang, or is you on your own tramp?”

“Neither suggestion is correct—­we are not bushrangers, and never expect to be.  We are men of the law.  Now tell us who you are,” my companion said, calmly seating himself near the stranger, and lighting his pipe,—­a proceeding that appeared to interest him intensely, for he snuffed the burning tobacco like a war horse within sight of a battle field.

“Just give me one draw of that ’ere pipe first,” pleaded the would-be ghost, and his request was gratified.

“Real ’bacco, and a real clay pipe, by the bloody jingoes,” he exclaimed.  “It’s many a day since I’ve had a taste of ’em afore.”

In fact the tobacco appeared to open his heart amazingly, and in a short time we had his whole history.

“My name,” the stranger said, “is Day Bly, although I’m commonly called Day, for short.  I was dragged up in London, and when I was twelve years of age I was apprenticed to an undertaker.  I used to take care of the shop, clean the hearse, and sleep in a coffin, with old pieces of mouldy velvet thrown over me to keep me warm in the night time.

“When I ate my meals, it was brought out of master’s house by one of the servant girls, and set on a pine coffin, such as we used to furnish the poor devils who hadn’t got much money, and who couldn’t afford to go the expensive ones.  When we had a holiday, such as Christmas, I’d slyly move the grub to one of the polished silver-plated affairs, and imagined that I was seated at a real mahogany table, and I tell you things use to taste better.

“I kept that up until one day I had a dish of meat, that, by some mistake, never satisfactorily accounted for, was really warm, and it took the polish from the slap-up affair, and left a white mark.  For that I got licked, and rebuked for my presumption to aristocracy.  I didn’t mind a flogging in those days, ’cos I was use to ’em, and let me tell you that London ’prentices, as a general thing, get more blows than holidays.”

“That’s so,” muttered Mr. Brown, who appeared to deeply sympathize with the speaker in that portion of his narrative.

“I grew up,” continued the red-haired individual, whose cognomen was Day, “quite fond of corpses.”