. The captain had the
advantage, three to one, and I made no doubt his employer bitterly
regretted not having a boatman whose principles were more strict. At the
end of the hour Captain Jay, who by nature was inclined to be taciturn
and crabbed, waxed loquacious and even jovial. He sang us the songs he
had learned in the winter lumber-camps, which Mr. Cooke never failed to
encore to the echo. My client vowed he had not spent a pleasanter
afternoon for years. He plied the captain with cigars, and explained to
him the mystery of the strings and labels; and the captain experimented
until he had broken some of the bottles.

Mr. Cooke was not a person who made any great distinction between the
three degrees, acquaintance, friendship, and intimacy. When a stranger
pleased him, he went from one to the other with such comparative ease
that a hardhearted man, and no other, could have resented his advances.
Mr. Drew was anything but a hard-hearted man, and he did not object to my
client's familiarity. Mr. Cooke made no secret of his admiration for Mr.
Drew, and there were just two things about him that Mr. Cooke admired and
wondered at, above all else,--the bushy red whiskers. But it appeared
that these were the only things that Mr. Drew was really touchy about.
I noticed that the detective, without being impolite, did his best to
discourage these remarks; but my client knew no such word as
discouragement. He was continually saying: "I think I'll grow some like
that, old man," or "Have those cut," and the like,--a kind of humor in
which the captain took an incredible delight. And finally, when a
certain pitch of good feeling had been arrived at, Mr. Cooke reached out
and playfully grabbed hold of the one near him. The detective drew back.
"Mr. Cooke," said he, with dignity, "I'll have to ask you to let my
whiskers alone."

"Certainly, old man," replied my client, anything but abashed. "You'll
pardon me, but they seemed too good to be true. I congratulate you on
them."

I was amused as well as alarmed at this piece of boldness, but the
incident passed off without any disagreeable results, except, perhaps,
a slight nervousness noticeable in the detective; and this soon
disappeared. As the sun grew low, the Celebrity's conductors straggled
in with fishing-rods and told of an afternoon's sport, and we left the
captain peacefully but sonorously slumbering on the bank.

"Crocker," said my client to me, afterwards, "they didn't feel