et, but for the fit of hypochondriacal humour which had fallen black
upon him that day of deliverance and made him yearn, with an intensity
increasing every moment, to separate himself from his repugnant
associates and haste the moment of solitude and silence, he might have
been rescued, then and for ever, from the quagmire in which perverse
circumstances had enslaved him.

"Look'ee here, matey," said one of his fellow-workers to him, in a
transient fit of good-fellowship which the prospect of approaching
sprees had engendered in him even towards one whom all on board had
felt vaguely to be of a different order, and disliked accordingly,
"you don't seem to like a jolly merchantman--but, maybe, you wouldn't
take more kindly to a man-o'-war. Do you see that there ship?--a
frigate she is; and, whenever there's a King's ship in the Mersey that
means that it's more wholesome for the likes of us to lie low. You
take a hint, matey, and don't be about Liverpool to-night, or until
she's gone. Now, I know a crib that's pretty safe, Birkenhead way;
Mother Redcap's, we call it--no one's ever been nabbed at Mother
Redcap's, and if you'll come along o' me--why then if you won't, go
your way and be damned to you for a----"

This was the parting of Adrian Landale from his fellow-workers. The
idea of spending even one night more in that atmosphere of rum and
filth, in the intimate hearing of blasphemous and obscene language,
was too repulsive to be entertained, and he had turned away from the
offer with a gesture of horror.

With half a dozen others, in whose souls the attractions of the town
at night proved stronger than the fear of the press party, he
disembarked on the Lancashire side, and separating from his
companions, for ever, as he thought, ascended the miserable lanes
leading from the river to the upper town.

His purpose was to sleep in one of the more decent hotels, to call the
next day for help at the banking-house with which the Landales had
dealt for ages past, and thence to take coach for Pulwick. But he had
planned without taking reck of his circumstances. No hotel of repute
would entertain this weather-beaten common sailor in the meanest of
work-stained clothes. After failing at various places even to obtain a
hearing, being threatened with forcible ejectment, derisively referred
to suitable cribs in Love Lane or Tower Street, he gave up the
attempt; and, in his usual dejection of spirit, intensified by
unavowed an