No mischance, nor indeed any incident of note, befell me during the remainder of my journey.  I passed the next night in a wagon, swaddled in a load of fresh mown hay, the driver with rustic friendliness inviting me to keep him company on his dark journey.  On the third night after my departure from the Hall I trudged, weary and footsore, into Bristowe, and sought a bed at the White Hart in Old Market Street, this tavern having been recommended to me by the friendly hay-cart man.

Next day, when I went out to view the city of which I had heard so much, I was struck with wonderment, not merely at its size, wherein it dwarfed Shrewsbury and all the towns through which I had passed, but at its noise and bustle.  Shrewsbury was a sleepy old town, where life went on very placidly from day to day, and the sight of these busy, though narrow, streets with their many fine buildings and their swarms of people, the dogs drawing little carts of merchandise, the river with its bridges, the floating basin with many tall ships, the quays thronged with sailors and lightermen, filled me not only with wonder, but with a sense of loneliness and insignificance.

Among all these folk, intent upon their various occupations, what place was there for me, I wondered?  I got in the way of a line of men on the quay side carrying large bales which I presumed had been unloaded from a ship there moored.  One of them hustled me violently aside, another made a coarse jest upon me, and, raw and inexperienced as I was, bewildered by the strangeness of it all, I felt a sinking at the heart, and questioned for the first time whether I had been wise in forsaking the scenes I knew and venturing unbefriended into this outpost of the great world.

I was standing apart, gazing at the shipping, when an old, weather-beaten sailor, smoking a black pipe, came up and accosted me.

“Lost your bearings, matey?” he said in a very hoarse voice, which yet had a tone of friendliness.

No doubt I looked foolish, for I knew no more than the dead what he meant.

“Lor’ bless you,” he went on, “I knows all about it.  ’Tis fifty year since I made a course for that ’ere port from Selwood way, and I stood like a stuck pig—­like as you be standing now.  Be you out o’ Zummerzet, like me?”

I told him I came from Shrewsbury.

“Never heard tell of it,” he said, “but seemingly they grow high in those parts.  And what made ye steer for Bristowe, if I might ask?”

Mr. Vetch had warned me against confiding in strangers; but there was something so honest in the old seaman’s look that I, who have rarely been wrong in my instinctive judgment of men, determined to trust him, and told him so much of my story as I thought necessary.

The result was that he took me under his wing, so to speak.  He spent the whole morning with me, explaining to me the differences in build and rig between the vessels lying there, telling me a great deal about the duties of a seaman and the ways of life at sea.  He counseled me very earnestly to give up my design and seek an employment on shore.