ad no money left me, but
I thought I would stay in an hotel this time. I can go out
and in whenever I like, and I find it an advantage to do so.
The doors are always open. Come along!"

The two friends walked up the highway arm in arm, Jimmie
observing a patronising silence while his companion covered
him with affectionate compliments. After they had walked a
considerable distance in meditation, the shipmate said--

"Where is the hotel? Are we far off?"

"No," said the accommodating Jimmie; "here it is. I must
make one condition with you before we get any nearer. You
must go in by the back door."

"I will go in by any b---- door you like. I am not a
particular chap in that way!"

"Very well," said Jimmie, pointing to an object in the
middle of the road; "then you go in there, and I will go in
by the front."

"But," said his shipmate, "that is a boiler."

"_You_" said the philanthropic James, "may call it what you
like, but, for the time being, it is my hotel! It has been
my residence for two weeks, and I offer you the end I do not
use. If you accept it, all that you require to make you
perfectly comfortable is a bundle of straw. We shall sit
rent free!"

Needless to say the offer was accepted, and the two "plants"
lived together until they got a ship.

Mr. Hall's knowledge of the Highway, as it was called,
enabled him to be of occasional service to the police, hence
he was on the most cordial terms of friendship with them. He
could swoop plain-clothes men through intricacies which
flashed with the flames of crime, without exciting the
slightest suspicion of the object he had in view. He could
talk, swear, and drink in accurate harmony with his
acquaintances, and was looked upon with favour by a circle
of estimable friends. Members of the constabulary were
always considerate and accommodating towards him during his
periodic outbursts of alcoholic craving. He owed much to the
care they took of him during his fits of debauchery; and he
was not unmindful of it when he had the wherewithal to
compensate them. Like most of those wayward inebriates who
followed the sea as a calling, he was a perfect sailor; and
even his capricious sensual habits did not prevent him being
sought to rejoin vessels he had sailed in.

Jimmie Hall was only one among thousands of fine fellows who
were encouraged to go to bestial excesses by gangs of
predatory vermin (men and women) who infested Wapping and
Ratcliffe Highway.

The