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After old Jacob had fallen into ill health, lighterman Kristiansen used to come out oftener to Torungen with provisions and other necessaries; and his visits now became periodical.

Their suspicions were fully confirmed therein by the lighterman who saw Billings and Wood throw the same into the dock, as before mentioned. It was now time for Mrs. Hayes, Billings, and Wood to consider how they should dispose of the body. Mrs. Hayes and Wood proposed to put it in a box, where it might lie concealed till a convenient opportunity offered for removing it.

"White as snow," he repeated. "That's me," said the lighterman, as he pushed his unwieldy craft from the jetty. "I'll tell Sam your opinion of 'im. So long." The watchman went a shade redder than usual. That's twins all over, he said, sourly, always deceiving people. It's Bill arter all, and, instead of hurting 'is feelings, I've just been flattering of 'im up.

"Wot are you talking about, Ginger?" ses Peter. "Did she smack your face too?" ses Ginger. "Yes," ses Peter. "They're as like as two peas, him and 'is brother," said the night- watchman, gazing blandly at the indignant face of the lighterman on the barge below; "and the on'y way I know this one is Sam is because Bill don't use bad langwidge.

And her grandfather was cross enough himself; for he was afraid that he had done something foolish, and broken with the lighterman. Salvé came out to the rock again the next autumn, after a voyage to Liverpool and Havre. At first he was rather shy, although his father and old Jacob Torungen had in the interval, in spite of that little affair of the previous year, been on the best of terms.

Matthew Flood was the son of a man who kept the Clink Prison in the parish of St. Mary Overys, who had given him as good an education as was in his power, and bound him apprentice to one Mr. Williams, a lighterman. In this occupation he might certainly have done well, if he had not fallen into the company of those lewd persons who brought him to his fate.

"Sailormen ain't wot you might call dandyfied as a rule," said the night- watchman, who had just had a passage of arms with a lighterman and been advised to let somebody else wash him and make a good job of it; "they've got too much sense.

This condition of things corresponds in some degree to that described by Captain Marryat in that fine old story "Jacob Faithful," in the early chapters of which we get diverting glimpses of life on board a Thames lighterman. But the river population of China is still more absolutely aquatic in manner of life than the Thames barge-folk.

They leave dressing up and making eyesores of theirselves to men wot 'ave never smelt salt water; men wot drift up and down the river in lighters and get in everybody's way." He glanced fiercely at the retreating figure of the lighterman, and, turning a deaf ear to a request for a lock of his hair to patch a favorite doormat with, resumed with much vigor his task of sweeping up the litter.

Whilst the lighterman and old Jacob enjoyed a heart-warming glass together in the house, Salvé carried the things up to the cellar, Elizabeth following him up and down every time, and the conversation meanwhile going round all the points of the compass, so to speak.