't like it, you won't."

"Do you?" asked Junius.

"Me? I'm used to it. But, Lord, look at them 'ands! I'll lay you never
did a day's work in your life."

"Did you?" inquired Junius Peabody equably.

"Garn!" retorted Sydney with a peculiarly unlovely sneer. "W'y, you
don't know yet what you've come to, you don't. 'Jaimes, fetch me me
mornin' drawft!'--that's your style. Only there 'int no Jaimes no more,
and no drawfts to be 'ad. Ho!... You're only a beachcomber now, mytey. A
lousy beachcomber! And you needn't expect me to do none of your beggin'
for you, for I won't--no fear!"

Junius observed him with attention, with rather more attention than he
could remember having bestowed upon any specific object for a long time.
He examined the features of the Sydney Duck, the undue prominence of
nose and upper lip, the singularly sharp ridge of the whole front
face--whittled, as it might have been; the thin, pink ears and the
jutting teeth that gave him something of the feeble ferocity of a rat.
And with new perception he saw Sydney Duck, not only as an unpleasant
individual but as a type, the fitting comrade and associate for such as
he.

"It's a fact," said Junius Peabody; "I've fallen, pretty low."...

* * * * *

He looked out again upon that unprofitable dawning. To right and left
stretched the flat, dim monotony of the beach, lined in misty surf and
hedged with slim palms like a tufted palisade. From behind drifted the
smokes from scores of homely hearths. Down by Tenbow Head the first
pearling luggers were putting out under silver clouds of sail. Sea and
land stirred once more with the accustomed affairs of busy men, but here
between land and sea was the fringe of things, the deserted domain of
wreckage and cast-off remnants. Here lay a broken spar half buried in
the sand, part of the complex fabric that once enabled some fair ship
to skim the waves. And here among the kelp and the bodies of marine
animals he saw the loosened staves of a barrel limply spread and
upthrust like the fingers of some dead giant, with an empty bottle near
by as if fallen from that slack grip. And here, lastly, he was aware of
Junius Peabody, also on the beach, washed up at the far edge of the
world like any other useless bit of jetsam: to stay and to rot.

"Pretty low," said Junius Peabody.

But Sydney took no offense, and seemed, on the contrary, to extract a
certain degree of pleasure from the other's