dense with the fumes of dead smoke, and foul with the smell of stale
liquor. Broken pipes lay on the table amid the refuse of spilled beer,
and a candle, at which the pipes had been lighted, still stood there
burning.

Davy was reeling about madly, and singing and laughing in gust on gust.
His face was afire with the drink that he had taken, and his throat was
guggling and sputtering.

"I care nothing, not I--say what you like; I've had worse losses in my
time," he cried.

He plunged his right hand into his breast and drew out something.

"See, that, mate?" he said, and held it up under the glass chandelier.

It was a little curl of brown hair, tied across the middle with a piece
of faded blue ribbon.

"See it?" he cried in a husky gurgle. "It's all I've got left in the
world."

He held it up to the light and looked at it, and laughed until the glass
pendants of the chandelier swung and jingled with the vibration of his
voice.

"The gorse under the ling, eh? There you are then! _She_ gave it me.
Yes, though, on the night I sailed. My gough! The ruch and proud I was
that night anyway! I was a homeless beggar, but I might have owned the
stars, for, by God, I was walking on them going away."

He reeled again, and laughed as if in mockery of himself, and then said,
"That's ten year ago, mate, and I've kep' it ever since. I have though,
here in my breast, and it's druv out wuss things. When I've been far
away foreign, and losing heart a bit, and down with the fever, maybe, in
that ould hell, and never looking to see herself again, no, never, I've
been touching it gentle and saying to myself, soft and low, like a sort
of an angel's whisper, 'Nelly is with you, Davy. She isn't so very far
away, boy; she's here for all.' And when I've been going into some dirt
of a place that a dacent man shouldn't, it's been cutting at my ribs,
same as a knife, and crying like mad, 'Hould hard, Davy; you can't take
Nelly in theer?' When I've been hot it's been keeping me cool, and when
I've been cold it's been keeping me warm, better till any comforter.
D'ye see it, sir? We're ould comrades, it and me, the best that's going,
and never no quarreling and no words neither. Ten years together, sir;
blow high, blow low. But we're going to part at last."

Then he picked up the candle in his left hand, still holding the lock of
hair in his right.

"Good-by, ould friend!" he cried, in a shrill voice, rolling his head to
look at the curl,