ry. An Englishman or American may
engage in manual labor where skill is required and the pay is high, but
he must live up to the standards of his countrymen. If forced to work
with natives and adopt their mode of life, he risks being distrusted and
avoided by men of his color. Remembering that Payne had interfered when
he was stabbed, Dick had made some inquiries about him, but getting no
information decided that he had left the town.

"Then he's lodging in this street," he said.

"That's what they told me at the wine-shop. He had to quit the last place
because he couldn't pay."

"Wasn't he with Oliva?" Dick inquired.

"He was, but Oliva turned him down. I allow it was all right to fire him,
but he's surely up against it now."

Dick put his hand in his pocket. "If you find him, you might let me know.
In the meantime, here's five dollars----"

"Hold on!" said Kemp. "Don't take out your wallet here. I'll fix the
thing, and ask for the money when I get back."

Dick left him, and when he had transacted his business returned to the
dam. An hour or two later Kemp arrived and stated that he had not
succeeded in finding Payne. The man had left the squalid room he occupied
and nobody knew where he had gone.

During the next week Dick had again occasion to visit the harbor, and
while he waited on the mole for a boat watched a gang of peons unloading
some fertilizer from a barge. It was hard and unpleasant work, for the
stuff, which had a rank smell, escaped from the bags and covered the
perspiring men. The dust stuck to their hot faces, almost hiding their
color; but one, though equally dirty, looked different from the rest, and
Dick, noting that he only used his left arm, drew nearer. As he did so,
the man walked up the steep plank from the lighter with a bag upon his
back and staggering across the mole dropped it with a gasp. His heaving
chest and set face showed what the effort had cost, and the smell of the
fertilizer hung about his ragged clothes. Dick saw that it was Payne and
that the fellow knew him.

"You have got a rough job," he remarked. "Can't you find something
better?"

"Nope," said the man grimly. "Do you reckon I'd pack dirt with a crowd
like this if I could help it?"

Dick, who glanced at the lighter, where half-naked negroes and mulattos
were at work amid a cloud of nauseating dust, understood the social
degradation the other felt.

"What's the matter with your arm?" he asked.

Payne pulled up