There was another noticeable character in the rough part of the heterogeneous crowd.  This man, while on a footing of the greatest intimacy with the runners, was far inferior to them in the matter of dress.  Locus, in reply to my queries, informed me that he was a professional oyster-opener; but, judging from his appearance in general, I should have guessed that he was a professional oyster-catcher also,—­a human dredge, employed chiefly at the bottom of the sea.  A perfect Hercules in build, “Lobster Bob,” as Locus called him, made his appearance on the wharf with two enormous creels of oysters, one balanced on each hip, with the careless ease of unconscious strength, His costume consisted solely of a ragged blue cotton shirt and trousers, immense knobby cowskin boots white with age, and a mouldy drab felt hat.  The button-less blue shirt flapped widely open from his brawny chest; and his shirt-sleeves, rolled up to the shoulder, gave full display to a pair of arms of a mould not usually to be found outside the prize-ring, and but seldom within the sanctuary of that magic circle.  As if in compensation for the merely nominal allowance of costume tolerated by this crustacean professor, his chest and arms were entirely covered with a wild arabesque of tattoo-work, in blue and red.  Many and original artists must have been employed in the embellishment of Robert’s tawny hide.  The one to whose sense of the fitness of things was intrusted the illustration of his right arm had seized boldly upon the oval protuberance of the biceps, a few skilfully disposed dots and dashes upon which had converted it into a face which was no bad reproduction of Bob’s own.  On the broad flexors of his sun-bronzed fore-arm there blazed a grand device which might have puzzled a whole college of heralds to interpret,—­a combination of eagles and banners and shields, coruscating with stars and radiant with stripes.  But more suggestive than any of these shams was the stern reality of a purple scar which ran round the back of his neck, from ear to ear.  More than one man must have been hurt, when that scar was made.

Notwithstanding the bull-dog projection of this formidable giant’s lower jaw, there sometimes beamed on his face that good-natured expression often observable in men whose unusual muscular development places them on a footing of physical superiority to those with whom they shoulder along the road of life.  When the runners “chaffed” him, nevertheless, it was in a mild way, and with manifest respect for his muscle,—­a sentiment in no way diminished when he suddenly clutched one of the least cautious among them by the nape of the neck, and held him out at arm’s-length, for some seconds, over the drowny water that kept lazily licking at the green moss on the old stakes of the rickety pier.

Even unto the Prince of Darkness, saith proverbial philosophy, let us concede his due.  If, then, a single ray of good illuminates at some happy moment the dark spirit of these roughs, let it be recorded with that bare, unfledged truth which is so much better a bird than uncandor with the finest of feathers upon him.