, and laughed, and shouted, and
cursed, and drank, until long past midnight. Rodney had never
witnessed _such_ a scene. He had never heard such filthy and
blasphemous language, nor seen such indecent behavior.

"Come, my lad," said a bluff sailor to him; "if you mean to be a
man, you must learn to toss off your glass. Your white face
don't look as if you ever tasted anything stronger than tea.
Here is a glass of grog,--down with it!"

And Rodney, who wanted to be a man, drank it with a swaggering
air, though it scorched his throat; and then another, until he
became very sick;--and the last he remembered was, that the
sailors and the women all seemed to be swearing and fighting
together.

The next morning he was awaked by Bill Seegor, and found
himself in a garret, on a miserable bed, with all his clothes
on. How he had ever got there he could not tell. His head ached,
and his limbs were stiff and pained him when he moved. His
throat was parched and burning, and he felt so wretchedly, that,
if he had dared, he would have begged permission to stay there
on the bed. But Bill told him that it was time to start and look
up a ship, for he had only money enough to last another day.
After breakfast they started, and inquired at every place which
Bill knew, but without success; no men or boys were wanted.

In the afternoon, Rodney was terribly frightened at seeing his
brother-in-law walking along the wharves. He knew in a moment
that he had come to New York to search for him; and he darted
round a corner into an alley, and hid himself behind some
barrels, till he had passed by. He afterwards learned that his
brother-in-law had been looking for him all day, and that he had
found and taken his trunk, and had been several times at places
which he had just left. O! if he had then abandoned his foolish
and wicked course, and gone home with his brother, how much
misery he would have escaped! But he contrived to keep out of
his way.

That evening Bill said to him, as they were eating their supper
in a cellar--

"Rodney, to-morrow morning we must start for Philadelphia."

"But how shall we get there?"

"We shall have to tramp it."

"How far is it?"

"About a hundred miles."

"How long will it take?"

"Four or five days."

"But how shall we get anything to eat, or any place to sleep on
the road?"

"Tell a good story to the farmers, and sleep on the hay-mows."

Rodney began to find out that "_the way of the transgr