al performance; and I made no doubt he was
already nosing after the secrets of his fellow-passengers. I took no
pains to conceal myself, my scorn for the creature being as strong as my
disgust. But he never looked my way, and it was night before I learned
he had observed me.

I was smoking by the engine-room door, for the air was a little sharp,
when a voice rose close beside me in the darkness.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Dodd," it said.

"That you, Bellairs?" I replied.

"A single word, sir. Your presence on this ship has no connection with
our interview?" he asked. "You have no idea, Mr. Dodd, of returning upon
your determination?"

"None," said I; and then, seeing he still lingered, I was polite enough
to add "Good-evening"; at which he sighed and went away.

The next day he was there again with the chair and the puma skin; read
his book and looked at the sea with the same constancy; and though there
was no child to be picked up, I observed him to attend repeatedly on a
sick woman. Nothing fosters suspicion like the act of watching; a man
spied upon can hardly blow his nose but we accuse him of designs; and I
took an early opportunity to go forward and see the woman for myself.
She was poor, elderly, and painfully plain; I stood abashed at the
sight, felt I owed Bellairs amends for the injustice of my thoughts,
and, seeing him standing by the rail in his usual attitude of
contemplation, walked up and addressed him by name.

"You seem very fond of the sea," said I.

"I may really call it a passion, Mr. Dodd," he replied. "'_And the tall
cataract haunted me like a passion_,'" he quoted. "I never weary of the
sea, sir. This is my first ocean voyage. I find it a glorious
experience." And once more my disbarred lawyer dropped into poetry:
"_Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!_'"

Though I had learned the piece in my reading-book at school, I came into
the world a little too late on the one hand--and I daresay a little too
early on the other--to think much of Byron; and the sonorous verse,
prodigiously well delivered, struck me with surprise.

"You are fond of poetry too?" I asked.

"I am a great reader," he replied. "At one time I had begun to amass
quite a small but well-selected library; and when that was scattered, I
still managed to preserve a few volumes--chiefly of pieces designed for
recitation--which have been my travelling companions."

"Is that one of them?" I asked, pointing to the volume