"Tom Callaway's son!" cries Tom Bull.

There was that about me to stir surprise; with those generous days so
long gone by, I will not gainsay it. Nor will I hold Tom Bull in fault
for doubting, though he stared me, up and down, until I blushed and
turned uneasy while his astonished eyes were upon me.

"Tom Callaway's son!" cries he again.

That I was.

"The same," says my uncle.

Forthwith was I once more inspected, without reserve--for a child has
no complaint to make in such cases--and with rising wonder, which, in
the end, caused Tom Bull to gape and gasp; but I was now less
concerned with the scrutiny, being, after all, long used to the
impertinence of the curious, than with the phenomena it occasioned. My
uncle's friend had tipped the bottle, and was now become so deeply
engaged with my appearance that the yellow whiskey tumbled into his
glass by fits and starts, until the allowance was far beyond that
which, upon information supplied me by my uncle, I deemed proper (or
polite) for any man to have at one time. The measurement of drams was
in those bibulous days important to me--of much more agreeable
interest, indeed, than the impression I was designed to make upon the
'longshore world.

"No such nonsense!" exclaims Tom Bull. "Tom Callaway died 'ithout a
copper t' bury un."

"Tom Callaway," says my uncle, evasively, "didn't have no _call_ t' be
buried; he was drown-ded."

My uncle's old shipmate sipped his whiskey with absent, but
grateful, relish, his eyes continuing to wander over so much of me
as grew above the table, which was little enough. Presently my
uncle was subjected to the same severe appraisement, and wriggled
under it in guilty way--an appraisement of the waterside slops:
the limp and shabby cast-off apparel which scantily enveloped his
great chest, insufficient for the bitter rain then sweeping the
streets. Thence the glance of this Tom Bull went blankly over the
foggy room, pausing nowhere upon the faces of the folk at the bar,
but coming to rest, at last, upon the fly-blown rafters (where was
no interest), whence, suddenly, it dropped to my hand, which lay
idle and sparkling upon the sticky table.

"Tom Callaway's son!" he mused.

My hand was taken, spread down upon the calloused palm of Tom Bull, in
disregard of my frown, and for a long time the man stared in puzzled
silence at what there he saw. 'Twas very still, indeed, in the little
stall where we three sat; the boisterous laught