sperating manner. It was a way he had."

"Then give me Powell every time," declared our new acquaintance sturdily.
"He didn't lecture me in any way. Not he. He said: 'How do you do?'
quite kindly to my mumble. Then says he looking very hard at me: 'I
don't think I know you--do I?'

"No, sir," I said and down went my heart sliding into my boots, just as
the time had come to summon up all my cheek. There's nothing meaner in
the world than a piece of impudence that isn't carried off well. For
fear of appearing shamefaced I started about it so free and easy as
almost to frighten myself. He listened for a while looking at my face
with surprise and curiosity and then held up his hand. I was glad enough
to shut up, I can tell you.

"Well, you are a cool hand," says he. "And that friend of yours too. He
pestered me coming here every day for a fortnight till a captain I'm
acquainted with was good enough to give him a berth. And no sooner he's
provided for than he turns you on. You youngsters don't seem to mind
whom you get into trouble."

"It was my turn now to stare with surprise and curiosity. He hadn't been
talking loud but he lowered his voice still more.

"Don't you know it's illegal?"

"I wondered what he was driving at till I remembered that procuring a
berth for a sailor is a penal offence under the Act. That clause was
directed of course against the swindling practices of the boarding-house
crimps. It had never struck me it would apply to everybody alike no
matter what the motive, because I believed then that people on shore did
their work with care and foresight.

"I was confounded at the idea, but Mr. Powell made me soon see that an
Act of Parliament hasn't any sense of its own. It has only the sense
that's put into it; and that's precious little sometimes. He didn't mind
helping a young man to a ship now and then, he said, but if we kept on
coming constantly it would soon get about that he was doing it for money.

"A pretty thing that would be: the Senior Shipping-Master of the Port of
London hauled up in a police court and fined fifty pounds," says he.
"I've another four years to serve to get my pension. It could be made to
look very black against me and don't you make any mistake about it," he
says.

"And all the time with one knee well up he went on swinging his other leg
like a boy on a gate and looking at me very straight with his shining
eyes. I was confounded I tell you. It made m