ded
in an abandonment to misery. And, taking another glance at him, I
thought it probable, from the frank regard of the blue and frivolous
eye which met mine, that he would have recognized timidity in a lady at
a distance, and would have passed her without seeing her. Uncertain
whether his guess in stopping me was lucky, he began pulling nervously
at a bleached moustache. His paw was the colour of leather. Its nails
were broken and stained with tar.

"Can't you get work?" I suggested. "Why don't you go to sea?"

This deliberately unfair question shook his upright confidence in
himself, and perhaps convinced him that he had, after all, stopped a
fool. He took his cap off, and flung a shower from it--it had been
draining into his moustache--and asked whether I did not think he
looked poor enough for a sailor.

Then I heard how he came to be there. Two days before he had signed
the articles of the steamship _Bilbao_. His box had gone aboard, and
that contained all his estate. The skipper, to be sure of his man, had
taken care of his discharge book, and so was in possession of the only
proof of his identity. Then he left the shipping office, and met some
friends.

Those friends! "That was a fine girl," he said, speaking more to the
rain than to me. "I never seen a finer." I began to show signs of
moving away. "Don't go, mister. She was all right. I lay you never
seen a finer. Look here. I reckon you know her." He plunged an eager
hand into an inner pocket. "Ever heard of Angel Light? She's on the
stage. It's a fact. She showed me her name herself on a programme
last night. There y'are." He triumphed with a photograph, and his
gnarled forefinger pointed at an exposed set of teeth under an
extraordinary hat. "Eh, ain't that all right? On the stage, too. Met
her at the corner of Pennyfields."

It was still raining. He flung another shower from his cap. I was
impatient, but he took my lapel confidentially. "Guv'nor," he said,
"if I could find the swab as took my money, I lay I'd make him look so
as his own mother 'ud turn her back on him. I would. Ten quid."

He had, it appeared, lost those friends. He was now seeking, with
varying emotions, both the girl and the swab. I suggested the dock and
his ship would be a better quest. No, it was no good, he said. He
tried that late last night. Both had gone. The policeman at the gate
told him so. The dock was there again this morning, but a