e something in your mind, Kennedy?"

"So many things, sir, that I could fill a book with them. That is why I
am foolish. Good-by, Mr. Tucker. I suppose you have all been very kind
to me--I don't rightly understand, but I think that you have. So good-by
and thank you."

The discreet manager took the outstretched hand and shook it quite
limply. There had been a momentary contraction of the brows while he
asked himself if astute rivals might not have been tampering with this
young fellow and trying to buy the firm's secrets. An instant's
reflection, however, reassured him. Alban had no secrets worth the name
to sell, and did he possess them, money would not buy them. "Half mad
but entirely honest," was Mr. Tucker's comment, "he will either make a
fortune or throw himself over London Bridge."

Alban had been quite truthful when he said that he had many things in
his mind, but this confession did not mean to signify a possibility of
new employment. In honest truth, he had hardly left the gates of the
great yard when he realized how hopeless his position was. Of last
week's wages but a few shillings remained in his pocket. He knew no one
to whom he might offer such services as he had to give. The works had
taught him the elements of mechanical engineering, and common sense told
him that skilled labor rarely went begging if the laborer were worthy
his hire. None the less, the prospect of touting for such employment
affrighted him beyond words. He felt that he could not again abase
himself for a few paltry shillings a week. The ambition to make of this
misfortune a stepping-stone to better things rested on no greater
security than his pride and yet it would not be wholly conquered. He
spent a long morning by the riverside planning schemes so futile that
even the boy's mind rejected them. The old copybook maxims recurred to
him and were treated with derision. He knew that he would never become
Lord Mayor of London--after a prosperous career in a dingy office which
he had formerly swept out with a housemaid's broom.

The lower reaches of the Thames are a world of themselves; peopled by a
nation of aliens; endless in the variety of their life; abounding in
weird and beautiful pictures which even the landsman can appreciate.
Alban rarely tired of that panorama of swirling waters and drifting
hulks and the majestic shapes of resting ships. And upon such a day as
this which had made an idler of him, their interest increased tenfol