pick up, to help you towards making that fraction
a respectable one. If it was summer-time, and you sat in the little
back-garden that had a ladder down to the river, you might feel a
moment's uneasiness when the river-police rowed by, as sometimes
happened; only, on the other hand, you might feel soothed by their
appearance of unconcern in riparian matters, almost amounting to
affectation. If any human beings took no interest in your antecedents,
surely it would be these two leisurely rowers and the superior person in
the stern, with the oilskin cape?

It was not summer-time--far from it--on the day that concerns this
story, when two men in the garden of The Pigeons looked out over the
river, and one said to the other:--"Right away over yonder it lies,
halfway to Barn Elms." They were so busy over the locating of it,
whatever it was, that they did not notice the police-wherry, oarless in
the swift-running tide, as it slipped down close inshore, and was
abreast of them before they knew it. Perhaps it was the fact that it was
not summer, and that these men must have left a warm fire in the parlour
of The Pigeons, to come out into a driving north-east wind bringing with
it needle-pricks of microscopic snow, hard and cold and dry, that made
the rowers drop their oars and hold back against the stream, to look at
them.

Or was it that the man in the stern had an interest in one of them. An
abrupt exclamation that he uttered at this moment seemed, to the man
rowing stroke, who heard more than his mate, to apply to the thicker and
taller man of the two. This one, who seemed to treat his pal as an
inferior or subordinate, met his gaze, not flinching. His companion
seemed less at his ease, and to him the big man said, scarcely moving
his lips to say it:--"Steady, fool!--if you shy, we're done." On which
the other remained motionless. What they said was heard by a boy close
at hand; but for whose version, given afterwards, this story would have
been in the dark about it.

The two rowers kept the boat stationary, backing water. The steersman's
left hand played with the tiller-rope, and the boat edged slowly to the
shore. There was a grating thrown out over the water from the parapet of
the river-wall, to the side of which was attached a boat-ladder, now
slung up, for no boat's crew ever stopped here at this season. The boat
was nearing this--all but close--when the bigger man spoke, on a sudden.
But he only said it was a rough