An occasional flurry of snow swept down the street as Dan reached the entrance.  Murphy was out on the sidewalk directing the adornment of his doorway with several faded evergreen wreaths, while inside, the boatmen gathered closer around the genial potstove and were not sorry that ice-bound rivers and harbor had brought their business to a temporary standstill.  They were discussing the morrow, which logically led to a consideration of the ice-pack, among other things, and thence to Cap’n Barney Hodge’s ill luck.

“Take a hard and early winter,” old Bill Darragh, the dean of the boatmen, was saying, “then a thaw in the middle o’ December, and then a friz-up, and ye git conditions that ain’t propitious, as ye may say, fur towboatmen—­nur fur us, neither.”

“True fur ye,” said “Honest Bill” Duffy.  “Nigh half the tugs in the harbor is in the Erie Basin with screw blades twisted off by the ice-pack, or sheathin’ ripped.  And it’s gittin’ worse.  They’ll be little enough money for us this year—­an’ I was countin’ on a hunder to pay a doctor’s bill.”

“Well, maybe you’ll get more than you think,” said Dan, whose words always carried weight because he was mate of a deep-sea tug.  “Captain Barney Hodge’s Three Sisters was laid up yesterday; a three-foot piece of piling bedded in an ice-cake got caught in her screw, and—­zip!  The other fellows are feeling so good about it that I think they’ll be apt to be generous.”

“We’ll drink to Barney’s bad health,” said Darragh, raising his glass.  “I saw him half an hour gone.  He looked like a dead man.  Cap’n Jim Skelly o’ the John Quinn piloted Gypsum Prince inter her dock last night.  No one ever handled her afore but Cap’n Barney.  An’ the Kentigern from Liverpool is due to-night.  Skelly’s layin’ fur her too; an’ he’ll git her.  That’ll take two vessels from Barney’s private monopoly.”

Darragh was right.  The towboatmen had Captain Barney where they wanted him, and they meant to gaff him hard.  He had always been too sharp for the rest, too good at a bargain, too mean; and what was more, he was in every way the best towboatman that ever lived.  No one liked him; but the steamship-captains engaged his services for towing and piloting, nevertheless, for the reason that they considered him a disagreeable necessity, believing that no other tugboatman could serve them so well.

As a matter of fact, there were several tugboat-captains hardly less skilful than Captain Barney, and in the time of his idleness they bade fair to secure not a few of his customers.  It was an old saying that Captain Barney, touched in his pocket, was touched in his heart and brain also—­they meant to touch him in just those places.

“I see him this morning,” said Duffy, “when he heard that Cap’n Jim Skelly ’d come in on the bridge of the Gypsum Prince.  He was a-weepin’ and cursin’ like a drunk.  Hereafter he’ll have to divide the Gypsum, and she arrives reg’lar, too.”