infelicity. They have toiled in daily pain and sorrow
throughout a long life to attain at last, if possible, to the coveted
condition. Some have pursued it in eager intensity, dancing and singing
as they went. Others have rushed after it in mad determination, cursing
and grumbling as they ran. Many have sought it in rapt contemplation of
the Sublime and Beautiful. Thousands have grubbed and grovelled for it
in the gratification or the drowning of the senses, while not a few have
sought and found it in simple, loving submission to their Maker's will,
as made known by Conscience and Revelation.

Of all the varied methods, John Gunter, the fisherman, preferred the
grub-and-grovelling method, and the favourite scene of his grovelling
was a low grog-shop in one of the lower parts of Yarmouth.

It must be said, at this point, that Gunter was not considered by his
mates as a regular out-and-out fisherman. He had never served his
apprenticeship, but, being a powerful and sufficiently active seaman,
was tolerated among them.

It is said that adversity makes strange bed-fellows. It is not less
true that strong drink makes strange companions. Gunter's shipmates
having had more than enough of him on the sea were only too glad to get
clear of him when on land. He therefore found himself obliged to look
out for new companionships, for it is certain that man yearns after
sympathy of some sort, and is not, under ordinary circumstances, content
to be alone.

The new friends he sought were not difficult to find. In one of the
darkest corners of the public-house referred to he found them--an
accidental, group--consisting of an ex-clerk, an ex-parson, and a
burglar, not "ex" as yet! They had met for the first time, yet, though
widely separated as regards their training in life, they had found the
sympathetic level of drink in that dingy corner. Of course, it need
hardly be said that the first two had swung far out of their proper
orbits before coming into harmonious contact with the last. Of course,
also, no one of the three desired that his antecedents should be known.
There was not much chance, indeed, that the former occupations of the
clerk or the parson would be guessed at, for every scrap of
respectability had long ago been washed out of them by drink, and their
greasy coats, battered hats, dirty and ragged linen, were, if possible,
lower in the scale of disreputability than the rough garments of the
burglar.

The