did it ever occur to you that you yourself are already a
great favorite with them. Your stories, your remarks, the views you
take of life, all your observations, are quite novel and amusing to
poor fellows whose whole experience of the world is picked up in stormy
nights in the Channel, or still more perilous adventures on shore. Many
have already asked me when you would be with me of an evening, that they
might come; others have begged they might bring friends along with them;
and, in short, they like you; and they are fellows who, when they have
fancies, don't grudge the price they pay for them."

I laughed heartily as I heard this. Assuredly it had never occurred to
myself to observe the circumstance, still less to make it a matter of
profit or speculation; but, somehow, the coarse flattery of even such
admiration was not without a certain charm for my mind.

Still, it was a part I could not have condescended to practise for gain,
nor, perhaps, had such been my intention, could I have been equally
successful.

Dubos, however, assigned me a duty which made a happy compromise
between my self-esteem and my desire for employment. This was to make
acquaintance with all of that adventurous race comprised between the
buccaneer and the smuggler; to learn their various wants, when they
voyaged, and for what, became my province. They were a wild, wasteful,
and reckless class, who loved far better to deal with one who should
stand to them in the relation of a companion than as a chapman or a
dealer.

If I am free to own that my occupation was not very dignified, I am
equally able to assert that I never prostituted any influence I obtained
in this way to personal objects of profit. On the contrary, I have
repeatedly been able to aid, by good counsel and advice, men whose
knowledge of adventurous life was far greater than my own; and
oftentimes has it occurred to me to obtain for them quadruple the value
they had themselves set upon objects they possessed.

I can scarcely account to myself for the extraordinary interest the
pursuit engendered,--the characters, the places they frequented, the
habits, were all of the strangest, and might reasonably have amused one
ardently fond of adventure; but there was, besides all this, a degree
of danger in the intercourse that imparted a most intense degree of
interest to it.

Many of these men were great criminals. Many of the valuables confided
to my keeping were obtained by the mos