some larger vessel lower down.

But his cries did not awaken the sleeper, and Martin ran on to the stairs; there was usually a boat belonging to one of his watermen friends moored on the farther side; he would put off in her and catch up with the drifting boat before she came to harm. But there was no boat at hand.

“Well, never mind,” said Martin to himself. “I can’t help the sleepy-head. I dare say he’ll be seen from some wherry or lighter. How strange that he should be here again!”

He sat down with his back against the stone post, and idly watched the boat as it rapidly drifted downstream. In a few minutes two men came from behind the head of the stairs, and grumbled at the absence of the watermen. Then one appeared, rowing his wherry from the opposite shore. The men hailed him; he pulled in to the foot of the stairs, took on the impatient passengers, and rowed away again, towards the city.

The dusk was gathering, and Martin was about to rise and go home when he heard footsteps on the other side of him, and a voice say, angrily,

“The boat is not here!”

“I can’t wait,” said another voice, which Martin recognised at once as Mr. Slocum’s. Instinctively he drew farther back into the shadow of the post. “It would not be safe. You must hire a waterman.”

“There isn’t one to be seen,” said the first speaker. “There never is when you want one.”

“No doubt one will come in a minute or two,” said Mr. Slocum. “Good-night.”

The speaker had been hidden from Martin by the post. He heard Mr. Slocum hurry away; then the other man came in sight and walked down the steps. Under his arm he carried a small box.

“Old Slocum here again,” thought Martin. “It’s very strange.”

He was now so much interested that he decided to wait and see what happened. The man was tall and swarthy, with a big red nose, and a beard as black as the foreign seaman’s. As he sat on the stairs he muttered to himself.

After a while a heavily-laden wherry approached from upstream. It contained several passengers, laughing and singing noisily, and when they disembarked and mounted the stairs Martin saw that they carried baskets, and guessed that they were picknickers returning from a jaunt to Chelsea or Battersea. The waterman was Jack 

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