which a signboard, dingy with age, announced that "T.
Grimshaw" was the proprietor. He nodded absently in response to the
salutations of Sam, the negro porter, and Winters, the junior clerk,
and sat down at his desk.

The building that housed the chandlery shop was a very old one, dating
back to a time previous to the Revolution. When it was erected the
Boston "Tea Party" was still in the future. If its old walls could
have spoken they might have told of the time when almost all New York
was housed below Chambers Street; when the "Bouwerie," free from its
later malodorous associations, was a winding country lane where lads
and lasses carried on their courtships in the long summer evenings;
when Cherry Hill, now notorious for its fights and factions, was the
abode of the city's wealth and fashion; when Collect Pond, on whose
site the Tombs now stands, was the skating center where New York's
belles and beaux disported themselves; when merry parties picnicked in
the woods and sylvan glades of Fourteenth Street.

Those same walls, looking across the East River, had seen the prison
ship _Jersey_, in whose foul and festering holds had died so many
patriots. And they had shaken to the salvos of artillery that greeted
Washington, when, at the end of the Revolutionary War, he had landed at
the Battery and had gone in pomp to Fraunce's Tavern for a farewell
dinner to his officers.

In its day it had been a stout and notable building, and even now it
might be good for another hundred years. But the inexorable march of
progress and the worth of the land on which it stood had sealed its
doom. Grimshaw had occupied it for twenty years, but when he sought to
renew his lease he had been told that no renewal would be granted. He
could still occupy the building and pay the rent from month to month.
But he now held possession only on sufferance, and it was distinctly
understood that he might be called upon to vacate at any time on a few
days' notice.

But "threatened men live long," and it was beginning to look as though
the same might be said of the old building. For two years the months
had come and gone without any hint of change, and Tyke had settled down
in the belief that the building would last as long as he did. After
that it did not matter. He had no kith or kin to whom to leave his
business.

He was a grim and grizzled old fellow, well on in his sixties. In his
earlier days he had been a master mariner, and had