It is not easy to be even sententious with the sinful when an open
confession robs us of our moral prerogative, so I only told him that it
seemed likely booze had something to do with it. His age could have
been forty; but it was not easy to judge, for the bridge of his nose
was a livid depression. Some accident had pushed in his face under the
eyes, giving him the battered aspect of ancient sin. His sinister
appearance would have frightened any timid lady if he had stopped her
in such a street, on such a day, with nobody about but a lost dog, and
the houses, it could be supposed, deserted, or their inmates secluded
in an abandonment to misery. And, taking another glance at him, I
thought it probable, from the frank regard of the blue and frivolous
eye which met mine, that he would have recognized timidity in a lady at
a distance, and would have passed her without seeing her. Uncertain
whether his guess in stopping me was lucky, he began pulling nervously
at a bleached moustache. His paw was the colour of leather. Its nails
were broken and stained with tar.

"Can't you get work?" I suggested. "Why don't you go to sea?"

This deliberately unfair question shook his upright confidence in
himself, and perhaps convinced him that he had, after all, stopped a
fool. He took his cap off, and flung a shower from it--it had been
draining into his moustache--and asked whether I did not think he
looked poor enough for a sailor.

Then I heard how he came to be there. Two days before he had signed
the articles of the steamship _Bilbao_. His box had gone aboard, and
that contained all his estate. The skipper, to be sure of his man, had
taken care of his discharge book, and so was in possession of the only