expensive half-club, half-restaurant in the lower part of the building—­which he ruled somewhat autocratically, as became his crest.  The restaurant was too expensive for me to patronize, but I saw many of its frequenters as well as those who had rooms at the club.  They were men of very distinct personality; a few celebrated, and nearly all notorious.  They represented a Bohemianism—­if such it could be called—­less innocent than my later experiences.  I remember, however, one handsome young fellow whom I used to meet occasionally on the staircase, who captured my youthful fancy.  I met him only at midday, as he did not rise till late, and this fact, with a certain scrupulous elegance and neatness in his dress, ought to have made me suspect that he was a gambler.  In my inexperience it only invested him with a certain romantic mystery.

One morning as I was going out to my very early breakfast at a cheap Italian cafe on Long Wharf, I was surprised to find him also descending the staircase.  He was scrupulously dressed even at that early hour, but I was struck by the fact that he was all in black, and his slight figure, buttoned to the throat in a tightly fitting frock coat, gave, I fancied, a singular melancholy to his pale Southern face.  Nevertheless, he greeted me with more than his usual serene cordiality, and I remembered that he looked up with a half-puzzled, half-amused expression at the rosy morning sky as he walked a few steps with me down the deserted street.  I could not help saying that I was astonished to see him up so early, and he admitted that it was a break in his usual habits, but added with a smiling significance I afterwards remembered that it was “an even chance if he did it again.”  As we neared the street corner a man in a buggy drove up impatiently.  In spite of the driver’s evident haste, my handsome acquaintance got in leisurely, and, lifting his glossy hat to me with a pleasant smile, was driven away.  I have a very lasting recollection of his face and figure as the buggy disappeared down the empty street.  I never saw him again.  It was not until a week later that I knew that an hour after he left me that morning he was lying dead in a little hollow behind the Mission Dolores—­shot through the heart in a duel for which he had risen so early.

I recall another incident of that period, equally characteristic, but happily less tragic in sequel.  I was in the restaurant one morning talking to my cousin when a man entered hastily and said something to him in a hurried whisper.  My cousin contracted his eyebrows and uttered a suppressed oath.  Then with a gesture of warning to the man he crossed the room quietly to a table where a regular habitue of the restaurant was lazily finishing his breakfast.  A large silver coffee-pot with a stiff wooden handle stood on the table before him.  My cousin leaned over the guest familiarly and apparently made some hospitable inquiry as to his wants, with his hand resting lightly on the coffee-pot handle.  Then—­possibly