berth on shore which might seem likely in the end to afford him a
means of making his way up again. It was not that he was afraid of
the roughness of a cabin boy's life; it was only because he knew
that it would be so very long before, working his way up from boy
to able bodied seaman, he could obtain a mate's certificate, and
so make a first step up the ladder. However, he thought that even
this would be better than going as a wagoner's boy, and he accordingly
crossed London Bridge, turned down Eastcheap, and presently found
himself in Ratcliff Highway. He was amused here at the nautical
character of the shops, and presently found himself staring into
a window full of foreign birds, for the most part alive in cages,
among which, however, were a few cases of stuffed birds.

"How stupid I have been!" he thought to himself. "I wonder I never
thought of it before! I can stuff birds and beasts at any rate a
deal better than those wooden looking things. I might have a chance
of getting work at some naturalist's shop. I will get a directory
and take down all the addresses in London, and then go around."

He now became conscious of a conversation going on between a little
old man with a pair of thick horn rimmed spectacles and a sailor
who had a dead parrot and a cat in his hand.

"I really cannot undertake them," the old man said. "Since the
death of my daughter I have had but little time to attend to that
branch. What with buying and selling, and feeding and attending to
the live ones, I have no time for stuffing. Besides, if the things
were poisoned, they would not be worth stuffing."

"It isn't the question of worth, skipper," the sailor said; "and