, by your wake as
you come down.'

'Ah!' replied the other, drily. 'So you're out, are you?'

'Yes, pardner.'

There was now a tender yellow moonlight on the river, and the new comer,
keeping half his boat's length astern of the other boat looked hard at
its track.

'I says to myself,' he went on, 'directly you hove in view, yonder's
Gaffer, and in luck again, by George if he ain't! Scull it is,
pardner--don't fret yourself--I didn't touch him.' This was in answer
to a quick impatient movement on the part of Gaffer: the speaker at the
same time unshipping his scull on that side, and laying his hand on the
gunwale of Gaffer's boat and holding to it.

'He's had touches enough not to want no more, as well as I make him
out, Gaffer! Been a knocking about with a pretty many tides, ain't he
pardner? Such is my out-of-luck ways, you see! He must have passed me
when he went up last time, for I was on the lookout below bridge here. I
a'most think you're like the wulturs, pardner, and scent 'em out.'

He spoke in a dropped voice, and with more than one glance at Lizzie who
had pulled on her hood again. Both men then looked with a weird unholy
interest in the wake of Gaffer's boat.

'Easy does it, betwixt us. Shall I take him aboard, pardner?'

'No,' said the other. In so surly a tone that the man, after a blank
stare, acknowledged it with the retort:

'--Arn't been eating nothing as has disagreed with you, have you,
pardner?'

'Why, yes, I have,' said Gaffer. 'I have been swallowing too much of
that word, Pardner. I am no pardner of yours.'

'Since when was you no pardner of mine, Gaffer Hexam Esquire?'

'Since you was accused of robbing a man. Accused of robbing a live man!'
said Gaffer, with great indignation.

'And what if I had been accused of robbing a dead man, Gaffer?'

'You COULDN'T do it.'

'Couldn't you, Gaffer?'

'No. Has a dead man any use for money? Is it possible for a dead man to
have money? What world does a dead man belong to? 'Tother world. What
world does money belong to? This world. How can money be a corpse's? Can
a corpse own it, want it, spend it, claim it, miss it? Don't try to go
confounding the rights and wrongs of things in that way. But it's worthy
of the sneaking spirit that robs a live man.'

'I'll tell you what it is--.'

'No you won't. I'll tell you what it is. You got off with a short time
of it for putting you're hand in the pocket of a sailor, a live sailor.
Make the most