d not hear of Sinbad.

'Oh, come, we're not Mussulmen,' said he; 'I declare, Richie, if I saw
a church open, I'd go in and sleep there. Were you thinking of tracking
the dog, then? Beer may be had somewhere. We shall have to find an
hotel. What can the time be?'

I owed it to him to tell him, so I climbed a lamppost and spelt out the
hour by my watch. When I descended we were three. A man had his hands on
Temple's shoulders, examining his features.

'Now speak,' the man said, roughly.

I was interposing, but Temple cried, 'All right, Richie, we are two to
one.'

The man groaned. I asked him what he wanted.

'My son! I've lost my son,' the man replied, and walked away; and he
would give no answer to our questions.

I caught hold of the lamp-post, overcome. I meant to tell Temple, in
response to the consoling touch of his hand, that I hoped the poor, man
would discover his son, but said instead, 'I wish we could see the Bench
to-night.' Temple exclaimed, 'Ah!' pretending by his tone of voice that
we had recently discussed our chance of it, and then he ventured to
inform me that he imagined he had heard of the place being shut up after
a certain hour of the night.

My heart felt released, and gushed with love for him. 'Very well,
Temple,' I said: 'then we'll wait till tomorrow, and strike out for some
hotel now.'

Off we went at a furious pace. Saddlebank's goose was reverted to by
both of us with an exchange of assurances that we should meet a dish the
fellow to it before we slept.

'As for life,' said I, as soon as the sharp pace had fetched my
breathing to a regular measure, 'adventures are what I call life.'

Temple assented. 'They're capital, if you only see the end of them.'

We talked of Ulysses and Penelope. Temple blamed him for leaving
Calypso. I thought Ulysses was right, otherwise we should have had no
slaying of the Suitors but Temple shyly urged that to have a Goddess
caring for you (and she was handsomer than Penelope, who must have been
an oldish woman) was something to make you feel as you do on a hunting
morning, when there are half-a-dozen riding-habits speckling the
field--a whole glorious day your own among them! This view appeared to
me very captivating, save for an obstruction in my mind, which was, that
Goddesses were always conceived by me as statues. They talked and they
moved, it was true, but the touch of them was marble; and they smiled
and frowned, but they had no variety they w