“Listen,” says Tobin.  “Ye’ve no ear for the gift of prophecy or the miracles of the inspired.  What did the palmist lady tell ye out of me hand?  ’Tis coming true before your eyes.  ‘Look out,’ says she, ’for a dark man and a light woman; they’ll bring ye trouble.’  Have ye forgot the nigger man, though he got some of it back from me fist?  Can ye show me a lighter woman than the blonde lady that was the cause of me hat falling in the water?  And where’s the dollar sixty-five I had in me vest when we left the shooting gallery?”

The way Tobin put it, it did seem to corroborate the art of prediction, though it looked to me that these accidents could happen to any one at Coney without the implication of palmistry.

Tobin got up and walked around on deck, looking close at the passengers out of his little red eyes.  I asked him the interpretation of his movements.  Ye never know what Tobin has in his mind until he begins to carry it out.

“Ye should know,” says he, “I’m working out the salvation promised by the lines in me palm.  I’m looking for the crooked-nose man that’s to bring the good luck.  ’Tis all that will save us.  Jawn, did ye ever see a straighter-nosed gang of hellions in the days of your life?”

’Twas the nine-thirty boat, and we landed and walked up-town through Twenty-second Street, Tobin being without his hat.

On a street corner, standing under a gas-light and looking over the elevated road at the moon, was a man.  A long man he was, dressed decent, with a segar between his teeth, and I saw that his nose made two twists from bridge to end, like the wriggle of a snake.  Tobin saw it at the same time, and I heard him breathe hard like a horse when you take the saddle off.  He went straight up to the man, and I went with him.

“Good-night to ye,” Tobin says to the man.  The man takes out his segar and passes the compliments, sociable.

“Would ye hand us your name,” asks Tobin, “and let us look at the size of it?  It may be our duty to become acquainted with ye.”

“My name” says the man, polite, “is Friedenhausman—­Maximus G. Friedenhausman.”

“’Tis the right length,” says Tobin.  “Do you spell it with an ‘o’ anywhere down the stretch of it?”

“I do not,” says the man.

“Can ye spell it with an ’o’?” inquires Tobin, turning anxious.

“If your conscience,” says the man with the nose, “is indisposed toward foreign idioms ye might, to please yourself, smuggle the letter into the penultimate syllable.”

“’Tis well,” says Tobin.  “Ye’re in the presence of Jawn Malone and Daniel Tobin.”

“Tis highly appreciated,” says the man, with a bow.  “And now since I cannot conceive that ye would hold a spelling bee upon the street corner, will ye name some reasonable excuse for being at large?”

“By the two signs,” answers Tobin, trying to explain, “which ye display according to the reading of the Egyptian palmist from the sole of me hand, ye’ve been nominated to offset with good luck the lines of trouble leading to the nigger man and the blonde lady with her feet crossed in the boat, besides the financial loss of a dollar sixty-five, all so far fulfilled according to Hoyle.”