wrapped. This added to the general noisomeness, while it
took away from my appetite.

In fact, I found that I had made a mistake. I had eaten a hearty dinner
five hours before, and to have done justice to the fare before me I
should have fasted for a couple of days. The pannikin contained skilly,
three-quarters of a pint, a mixture of Indian corn and hot water. The
men were dipping their bread into heaps of salt scattered over the dirty
tables. I attempted the same, but the bread seemed to stick in my mouth,
and I remembered the words of the Carpenter, "You need a pint of water to
eat the bread nicely."

I went over into a dark corner where I had observed other men going and
found the water. Then I returned and attacked the skilly. It was coarse
of texture, unseasoned, gross, and bitter. This bitterness which
lingered persistently in the mouth after the skilly had passed on, I
found especially repulsive. I struggled manfully, but was mastered by my
qualms, and half-a-dozen mouthfuls of skilly and bread was the measure of
my success. The man beside me ate his own share, and mine to boot,
scraped the pannikins, and looked hungrily for more.

"I met a 'towny,' and he stood me too good a dinner," I explained.

"An' I 'aven't 'ad a bite since yesterday mornin'," he replied.

"How about tobacco?" I asked. "Will the bloke bother with a fellow now?"

"Oh no," he answered me. "No bloomin' fear. This is the easiest spike
goin'. Y'oughto see some of them. Search you to the skin."

The pannikins scraped clean, conversation began to spring up. "This
super'tendent 'ere is always writin' to the papers 'bout us mugs," said
the man on the other side of me.

"What does he say?" I asked.

"Oh, 'e sez we're no good, a lot o' blackguards an' scoundrels as won't
work. Tells all the ole tricks I've bin 'earin' for twenty years an'
w'ich I never seen a mug ever do. Las' thing of 'is I see, 'e was
tellin' 'ow a mug gets out o' the spike, wi' a crust in 'is pockit. An'
w'en 'e sees a nice ole gentleman comin' along the street 'e chucks the
crust into the drain, an' borrows the old gent's stick to poke it out.
An' then the ole gent gi'es 'im a tanner."

A roar of applause greeted the time-honoured yarn, and from somewhere
over in the deeper darkness came another voice, orating angrily:

"Talk o' the country bein' good for tommy [food]; I'd like to see it. I
jest came up from Dover, an' blessed little tommy I got.