the woman for nussin'. They was ordained to it--not
men--never, no--not men. Look at my hand." The sailor extended
his arm across the table. "It's shakin' like a guitar-string when
a nigger's playing--and all along of that kid's yawls. Wimin
likes it."

"It's their moosic," said the lanky man.

Then in rushed the landlady with flashing eyes, and holding out
both palms before her said, "The child's mouth be that purple or
blue--it's fits."

"It's blackberries," answered the seaman. "They was nice and ripe,
and plenty of them."

"Blackberries!" almost shrieked the hostess, "and the child not
six weeks old! You've killed her! It's upset her blessed little
inside."

"I thought I'd done wrong," said the sailor, timidly, "that's why
I was a-carryin' of her topsy-turvy. I thought to ha' shooked the
blackberries out again."

"If that child dies," exclaimed the landlady, solemnly, "then
where will you go to, you unnat'ral parient?"

"I did it wi' the best intention," apologized the man.

"That's what Betsy Chaffers said when she gave wrong change. Oh
that heaven should ever a created man. They's terrible monsters."

She disappeared again after the child.

The sailor drank more beer, sighed, wiped his brow, then his
upper lip, and looked appealingly about him at the men who were
present. Of these there were four and a half. That is to say, four
men and a boy. Three of the men were at the table, and of these
the lanky sallow man was one.

These three men were strange, unpleasant-looking fellows, dressed up
in scraps of incongruous clothing, semi-nautical, semi-agricultural.
One was completely enveloped in a great-coat that had belonged to
a very tall and stout man, and he was short and thin. Another was
incompletely dressed, for what garments he had on were in rags
that afforded glimpses between them of tattered lining, of flesh,
but of no shirt.

The third man had the unmistakable lower jaw and mouth of an
Irishman.

By the fire sat an individual of a different type. He was a young
man with heavy brows and a large mouth devoid of lips, set tight
as a snapped man-trap. He had keen, restless, watchful eyes. His
hair was sandy, thrust forward over his brow, and hanging low
behind. On the opposite side of the hearth crouched a boy, a
timid, delicately formed lad with a large head and full lustrous
eyes.

"Come from far?" asked one of the ragamuffins at the table.

"Didn't yur hear me say from Lun'non town?" ans