"I think he is," replied the barkeeper.

It was the day before Christmas, and even the Bowery, "the thieves' highway," had taken on the emblems and spirit of the season, and the young officer smiled grimly as he saw a hard-faced proprietor of a saloon directing the hanging of wreaths and crosses over the door of his palace and telling the assistant barkeeper to make the red holly berries "show up" better.

"Knock at the door at the head of the flight," instructed the barkeeper, and after giving the man some money Ditson went up the stairs.

As he ate a free-lunch after a five-cent expenditure that morning, there was something in his air which would have prevented the most obtuse barkeeper in the world from commenting upon the quantity consumed.

We found there an ex-barkeeper of a certain well-known New-York cockney coffee-house, promoted into a frontiersman, but mindful still of flesh-pots.

"Don't know him," retorted the barkeeper imperturbably.

I am not aware, at present, what kind of liquor is habitually dispensed at these meetings, and for which the defendant so urgently clamored; but it will be my duty before this trial is over to discover it, if I have to summon every barkeeper in this district.

The young man regarded the barkeeper with puzzled eyes.

But how do you know that Dr. Rabbet may not be somewhere else, harrying a defenseless barkeeper, or superintending the making of dress-shirt protectors for the Hottentots, or doing something else clerical, when we get to the rectory?"