's nostrils in two
slender blue streams. Number Three continued:--

"You've got to know what kind o' hooks you want, and what kind o' bait
you want, and then, after _that_, you've"--

Numbers One and Two did not let him finish.

"--Got to know how to fish," they said; "that's so!" The smoke continued
to leak slowly from Number Two's nostrils and teeth, though he had not
lifted his cigarette the second time.

"Yes, you've got to know how to fish," reaffirmed the third. "If you
don't know how to fish, it's as like as not that nobody can tell you
what's the matter; an' yet, all the same, you aint goin' to ketch no
fish."

"Well, now," said the first man, with an unconvinced swing of his chin,
"_spunk_ 'll sometimes pull a man through; and you can't say he aint
spunky." Number Three admitted the corollary. Number Two looked up: his
chance had come.

"He'd a w'ipped you faw a dime," said he to Number One, took a
comforting draw from his cigarette, and felt a great peace.

"I take notice he's a little deaf," said Number Three, still alluding to
Richling.

"That'd spoil him for me," said Number One.

Number Three asked why.

"Oh, I just wouldn't have him about me. Didn't you ever notice that a
deaf man always seems like a sort o' stranger? I can't bear 'em."

Richling meanwhile moved on. His critics were right. He was not wanting
in courage; but no man from the moon could have been more an alien on
those sidewalks. He was naturally diligent, active, quick-witted, and
of good, though maybe a little too scholarly address; quick of temper,
it is true, and uniting his quickness of temper with a certain
bashfulness,--an unlucky combination, since, as a consequence, nobody
had to get out of its way; but he was generous in fact and in speech,
and never held malice a moment. But, besides the heavy odds which his
small secret seemed to be against him, stopping him from accepting such
valuable friendships as might otherwise have come to him, and besides
his slight deafness, he was by nature a recluse, or, at least, a
dreamer. Every day that he set foot on Tchoupitoulas, or Carondelet, or
Magazine, or Fulton, or Poydras street he came from a realm of thought,
seeking service in an empire of matter.

There is a street in New Orleans called Triton _Walk_. That is what all
the ways of commerce and finance and daily bread-getting were to
Richling. He was a merman--ashore. It was the feeling rather than the
knowledge of this t