washes; and it is the presiding genius, as it were, over a number of tumble-down sheds and out-houses, used for the storage of river lumber of one sort or another, or, in some cases, not used at all. And it is the resort of various riverside men; with occasionally some stranger, who appears to belong to salter waters, and to have lost his way there, in getting to the sea.

Outside this place, Philip Crowdy waited, for a long time, in the shadow of a doorway, debating with himself what to do. Being practically in strange quarters, he had had to enquire every step of the way, both as to his journey by train to Woolwich, and afterwards, when he had reached the place. In consequence, he had lost a very considerable amount of time; and was well aware that, if the man he pursued had come to the place at all, he had had all the advantage, from the fact of knowing the way clearly, and being able to make straight for his destination. Under these circumstances, it was quite impossible for Crowdy to know whether the man was in the place, or, if so, how long he had been there—or even if he had not already left the house.

Turning over all these points in his mind, Crowdy wandered, half aimlessly, down a little alley, which led beside the Three Watermen towards the river. He had just reached the end of it, and was shivering a little, at the melancholy prospect of dark water and darker mud before him, when a man, rushing hurriedly from the direction of the water, almost carried him off his legs; snapped out an oath at him; and was gone up the alley, and into the street, before Crowdy had recovered his breath.

“People seem in a hurry about these parts,” he murmured to himself. “Now, I wonder what on earth that fellow was running away from?”

Impelled, half by curiosity, and half by the restlessness which possessed him, he turned and walked some little distance, over a kind of dilapidated wharf, in the direction from which the man had come. The place was quite lonely and deserted, and only the skeleton-like frames of some old barges and other vessels, which some one, at some remote period, had been breaking up, stood up gaunt against the sky. Some darker object, among some broken timbers at the very edge of the water, attracted his attention; he went forward quickly, and then, with a half-suppressed cry, threw himself on his knees beside it.

It was the body of a man, who had apparently fallen just where he had been struck down; the hand which Philip Crowdy touched was quite warm, although the man was stone dead. But that was not the 

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