aid the man rudely, pushing it away contemptuously.
"It's only a faked-up thing anyway, made of paper-mashy."

Tom tried to convince him that the thing was perfectly genuine, and
actually grew on a vine in North Queensland; but the Notre Dame
gargoyle-featured person only heard him with a snort of contempt. It was
obvious he wouldn't buy it. So, sneeringly observing to the grocer that
no doubt five shillings was a large sum for a man in such a small way of
business as he was, Tom went out again into the cold world.

He tried several other places, but no one would even look at the thing.
After vainly tramping about for over two hours, he turned away towards
his lodging, feeling very dispirited, and thinking about breakfast.

Turning up a side street called Queen's Place, so as to make a short cut
home, he espied in a dimly-lighted little shop an old man and a boy
working at the cobbler trade. They had honest, intelligent faces, and
looked as if they wanted to buy a _locomotor ataxy_ very badly. He
tapped at the door and then entered.

"Would you like to buy this?" he said to the old man. He did not like to
repeat his foolish Latin nonsense, for the old fellow had such a worn,
kindly face, and his honest, searching eyes met his in such a way that
he felt ashamed to ask him to buy what could only be worthless rubbish
to him.

The cobbler looked at the monstrosity wonderingly. "'Tis a rare big
bean," he said, in the trembling quaver of old age, and with a mumbling
laugh like that of a pleased child. "I'll give you two shillin's for it.
I suppose you want money badly, or else you wouldn't be wanderin' about
at ten o'clock at night tryin' to sell it. I hope you come by it honest,
young man?"

Tom satisfied him on this score, and then the ancient gave him the two
shillings. Bidding him good-night, Tom returned home and went to bed.

(Quite two years after, when Denison returned to Sydney from the South
Seas with more money "than was good for his moral welfare," as his
sister-in-law remarked, he sought out the old cobbler gentleman and
bought back his _locomotor ataxy_ bean for as many sovereigns as he had
been given shillings for it.)

Next morning he was down at the wharves before six o'clock, smoking his
pipe contentedly, after breakfasting sumptuously at a coffee-stall for
sixpence. There was a little American barque lying alongside the
Circular Quay, and some of the hands were bending on her head-sails. Tom
sat do