ou and your
sharks!--no shark would want to eat you unless it was blind."

Mr. Ketchmaid allowed this gross reflection on his personal appearance
to pass unnoticed, and for the first time of many evenings sat listening
in torment as the shoemaker began the narration of a series of events
which he claimed had happened to a seafaring nephew. Many of these bore
a striking resemblance to Mr. Ketch-maid's own experiences, the
only difference being that the nephew had no eye at all for the
probabilities.

In this fell work Mr. Clark was ably assisted by the offended Mr.
Summers. Side by side they sat and quaffed lemonade, and burlesqued the
landlord's autobiography, the only consolation afforded to Mr. Ketchmaid
consisting in the reflection that they were losing a harmless pleasure
in good liquor. Once, and once only, they succumbed to the superior
attractions of alcohol, and Mr. Ketchmaid, returning from a visit to
his brewer at the large seaport of Burnsea, heard from the ostler the
details of a carouse with which he had been utterly unable to cope.

The couple returned to lemonade the following night, and remained
faithful to that beverage until an event transpired which rendered
further self-denial a mere foolishness.

It was about a week later, Mr. Ketchmaid had just resumed his seat after
serving a customer, when the attention of all present was attracted
by an odd and regular tapping on the brick-paved passage outside. It
stopped at the tap-room, and a murmur of voices escaped at the open
door. Then the door was closed, and a loud, penetrating voice called on
the name of Sol Ketchmaid.

"Good Heavens!" said the amazed landlord, half-rising from his seat and
falling back again, "I ought to know that voice."

"Sol Ketchmaid," bellowed the voice again; "where are you, shipmate?"

"Hennery Wig-gett!" gasped the landlord, as a small man with ragged
whiskers appeared at the wicket, "it can't be!"

The new-comer regarded him tenderly for a moment without a word, and
then, kicking open the door with an unmistakable wooden leg, stumped
into the bar, and grasping his outstretched hand shook it fervently.

"I met Cap'n Peters in Melbourne," said the stranger, as his friend
pushed him into his own chair, and questioned him breathlessly. "He told
me where you was."

"The sight o' you, Hennery Wiggett, is better to me than diamonds," said
Mr. Ketchmaid, ecstatically. "How did you get here?"

"A friend of his, Cap'n Jone