the Gut till it
is completely clear, then jumps into the door, and closes it very
quietly. When she comes out again it is as a rabbit comes from a
bolt-hole when a ferret is just behind. She runs five yards, stands
still, looks up and down, and tries very hard to walk home
unconcernedly. Sunday evenings, she hangs about outside until the bar
is opened. With the turn of the key, in she goes. Once a servant,
gossiping with her sailorman, kept the little woman outside for fully
ten minutes after the lock was shot back. Poor little woman, how great
her craving must be!

Last week, I saw a policeman standing at the top of the Gut. Up he
looked; down he looked; Seacombe was orderly. Stepping as if to arrest
a malefactor, he marched down the Gut.... Where was the policeman? A
battered billycock and a rakish pipe looked round the corner, then
withdrew. The battered billycock knew where the policeman was. The
price of a glass, and billycock would have been there too.

I was glad; for a few days before that the same policeman had arrested
a man by flinging him halfway across the street into the mud. It was
only a tramp. His witnesses, being poor people, dared not volunteer to
give evidence on his behalf, and would not have been believed had they
done so. He was sentenced to fourteen days: drunk and incapable,
abusive moreover. A drunkard cannot legally be arrested unless he is
also incapable or disorderly. It used to be a trick of the police to
shadow a harmless _Weary Willie_ until he happened to stumble, or even
to butt him down themselves. He then becomes drunk and incapable within
the meaning of the act, for, if the magistrate should doubt, is there
not dirt on his clothes? Obviously, circumstantially, he was incapable.
_He_, of course, must be a poor man. The trick is not safe with
tradesmen. These things are commonplaces amongst the poor.

But billycock hat will not forget!

28

[Sidenote: _MACKEREL DRIFTING_]

Yesterday morning early there was a great excitement along the beach.
Drift-boats could be seen in the offing. "I tell thee what 'tis," they
said, "the whiting be in an' us chaps an't been out to look for 'em. Us
don't du nort nowadays like us used tu." Later on, however, we heard
that the Plymouth drifters had been out after an autumn shoal of
mackerel, had caught some thousands and had made good prices. The
season for mackerel drifting here usually ends with July or August, but
good October mackerel, mixe