of exalted brew is concocted and drunk.

An occasional flurry of snow swept down the street as Dan reached the
entrance. Murphy was out on the sidewalk directing the adornment of
his doorway with several faded evergreen wreaths, while inside, the
boatmen gathered closer around the genial potstove and were not sorry
that ice-bound rivers and harbor had brought their business to a
temporary standstill. They were discussing the morrow, which logically
led to a consideration of the ice-pack, among other things, and thence
to Cap'n Barney Hodge's ill luck.

"Take a hard and early winter," old Bill Darragh, the dean of the
boatmen, was saying, "then a thaw in the middle o' December, and then a
friz-up, and ye git conditions that ain't propitious, as ye may say,
fur towboatmen--nur fur us, neither."

"True fur ye," said "Honest Bill" Duffy. "Nigh half the tugs in the
harbor is in the Erie Basin with screw blades twisted off by the
ice-pack, or sheathin' ripped. And it's gittin' worse. They'll be
little enough money for us this year--an' I was countin' on a hunder to
pay a doctor's bill."

"Well, maybe you'll get more than you think," said Dan, whose words
always carried weight because he was mate of a deep-sea tug. "Captain
Barney Hodge's _Three Sisters_ was laid up yesterday; a three-foot
piece of piling bedded in an ice-cake got caught in her screw,
and--zip! The other fellows are feeling so good about it that I think
they'll be apt to be generous."

"We'll drink to Barney's bad health," said Darragh, raising his glass.
"I saw him half an hour gone. He looked like a dead man. Cap'n Jim
Skelly o' the _John Quinn_ piloted _Gypsum Prince_ inter her dock last
night. No one ever handled her afore but Cap'n Barney. An' the
_Kentigern_ from Liverpool is due to-night. Skelly's layin' fur her
too; an' he'll git her. That'll take two vessels from Barney's private
monopoly."

Darragh was right. The towboatmen had Captain Barney where they wanted
him, and they meant to gaff him hard. He had always been too sharp for
the rest, too good at a bargain, too mean; and what was more, he was in
every way the best towboatman that ever lived. No one liked him; but
the steamship-captains engaged his services for towing and piloting,
nevertheless, for the reason that they considered him a disagreeable
necessity, believing that no other tugboatman could serve them so well.

As a matter of fact, there were several tugboat-capt