the colour
of our cash. The natives along the coast were all dubious; and "bean-
feasters" from London, dashing past in coaches, cheered and jeered and
shouted insulting things after us. But before we were done with the
Maidstone district my friend found that we were as well clad, if not
better, than the average hopper. Some of the bunches of rags we chanced
upon were marvellous.

"The tide is out," called a gypsy-looking woman to her mates, as we came
up a long row of bins into which the pickers were stripping the hops.

"Do you twig?" Bert whispered. "She's on to you."

I twigged. And it must be confessed the figure was an apt one. When the
tide is out boats are left on the beach and do not sail, and a sailor,
when the tide is out, does not sail either. My seafaring togs and my
presence in the hop field proclaimed that I was a seaman without a ship,
a man on the beach, and very like a craft at low water.

"Can yer give us a job, governor?" Bert asked the bailiff, a kindly faced
and elderly man who was very busy.

His "No" was decisively uttered; but Bert clung on and followed him
about, and I followed after, pretty well all over the field. Whether our
persistency struck the bailiff as anxiety to work, or whether he was
affected by our hard-luck appearance and tale, neither Bert nor I
succeeded in making out; but in the end he softened his heart and found
us the one unoccupied bin in the place--a bin deserted by two other men,
from what I could learn, because of inability to make living wages.

"No bad conduct, mind ye," warned the bailiff, as he left us at work in
the midst of the women.

It was Saturday afternoon, and we knew quitting time would come early; so
we applied ourselves earnestly to the task, desiring to learn if we could
at least make our salt. It was simple work, woman's work, in fact, and
not man's. We sat on the edge of the bin, between the standing hops,
while a pole-puller supplied us with great fragrant branches. In an
hour's time we became as expert as it is possible to become. As soon as
the fingers became accustomed automatically to differentiate between hops
and leaves and to strip half-a-dozen blossoms at a time there was no more
to learn.

We worked nimbly, and as fast as the women themselves, though their bins
filled more rapidly because of their swarming children, each of which
picked with two hands almost as fast as we picked.

"Don'tcher pick too clean, it's against