set on it, I says, says I, take all you'll need for a week, an' then perhaps there'll be a turn in affairs that'll help you out of a bad hole. Here are my pails; they're yours an' welcome. Fill 'em both with water, or perhaps cold tea would be best; buy whatever will be most fillin', an' walk aboard as bold as a lion within the next hour. Them as see you are bound to think you're waitin' upon some of the workmen, an' not a word will be said. The hidin' of yourself is easy enough; it's the comin' out that'll be rough."

"Say, you're what I call a dandy!" and Teddy laid his 26 hand on the man's knee approvingly. "I was mighty lucky to come across one of your kind."

26

"I ain't so certain about that. Before twenty-four hours have gone by you may be wishin' you'd never seen me."

"I'll risk that part of it, an' if you really mean for me to have the pails, you'll see me go aboard the steamer mighty soon."

"They're yours, my boy, an' I only hope you'll come out of the scrape all right."

"Don't worry 'bout that; it'll be a terrible spry captain that can make me cry baby when I'm headin' toward where dad is. Be good to yourself!"

Teddy took up the pails, and as he turned to go out of the yard his new acquaintance asked, solicitously:

"Got money enough to buy what'll be needed? If you haven't there's some odd change about my clothes that—"

"I'm well fixed, an' that's a fact. Ever since the idea came to me of huntin' dad up, I've kept myself in shape to leave town on a hustle. You're mighty good, just the same."

"I'm makin' an old fool of myself, that's what I'm doin'," the man replied, angrily, and then turned resolutely away, muttering to himself, "It's little less than sheer cruelty to let a lad like him stow away on a collier. There ain't one chance in a thousand of his findin' the father he's after, an' the odds are in favour of his havin' a precious hard time before gettin' back to this town."

Then a whistle sounded as a warning that the labourers 29 must return to their tasks, and a moment later the building was alive once more with the hum and whir of machinery, the clanking of great chains, and the voices of men.

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