ou go find 'em yourself?" demanded a gruff boatman.

"How can I go find 'em myself? Dis poor ole game-legged darkie's friends
must come to him. Oh, whar, whar is dat good friend of dis darkie's, dat
good man wid de weed?"

At this point, a steward ringing a bell came along, summoning all
persons who had not got their tickets to step to the captain's office;
an announcement which speedily thinned the throng about the black
cripple, who himself soon forlornly stumped out of sight, probably on
much the same errand as the rest.

CHAPTER IV.

RENEWAL OF OLD ACQUAINTANCE.

"How do you do, Mr. Roberts?"

"Eh?"

"Don't you know me?"

"No, certainly."

The crowd about the captain's office, having in good time melted away,
the above encounter took place in one of the side balconies astern,
between a man in mourning clean and respectable, but none of the
glossiest, a long weed on his hat, and the country-merchant
before-mentioned, whom, with the familiarity of an old acquaintance, the
former had accosted.

"Is it possible, my dear sir," resumed he with the weed, "that you do
not recall my countenance? why yours I recall distinctly as if but half
an hour, instead of half an age, had passed since I saw you. Don't you
recall me, now? Look harder."

"In my conscience--truly--I protest," honestly bewildered, "bless my
soul, sir, I don't know you--really, really. But stay, stay," he
hurriedly added, not without gratification, glancing up at the crape on
the stranger's hat, "stay--yes--seems to me, though I have not the
pleasure of personally knowing you, yet I am pretty sure I have at least
_heard_ of you, and recently too, quite recently. A poor negro aboard
here referred to you, among others, for a character, I think."

"Oh, the cripple. Poor fellow. I know him well. They found me. I have
said all I could for him. I think I abated their distrust. Would I could
have been of more substantial service. And apropos, sir," he added, "now
that it strikes me, allow me to ask, whether the circumstance of one
man, however humble, referring for a character to another man, however
afflicted, does not argue more or less of moral worth in the latter?"

The good merchant looked puzzled.

"Still you don't recall my countenance?"

"Still does truth compel me to say that I cannot, despite my best
efforts," was the reluctantly-candid reply.

"Can I be so changed? Look at me. Or is it I who am mistaken?--Are you
not, sir, He