“Ah, Spunyarn,” says Tom, greeting the old sailor with child-like fondness, as the tears are seen gushing into the eyes, and coursing down the browned face of the old mariner, “I owe you a debt I fear I never can pay.  I have thought of you in my absence, and had hoped on my return to see you released.  I am sorry you are not—­”

“Well, as to that,” interrupts the old sailor, his face resuming its wonted calm, “I can’t-you know I can’t, Tom,—­sail without a clearance.  I sometimes think I’m never going to get one.  Two years, as you know, I’ve been here, now backing and then filling, in and out, just as it suits that chap with the face like a snatch-block.  They call him a justice.  ’Pon my soul, Tom, I begin to think justice for us poor folks is got aground.  Well, give us your hand agin’ (he seizes Tom by the hand); its all well wi’ you, anyhows.’

“Yes, thank God,” says Tom, returning his friendly shake, “I have conquered the enemy, and my thanks for it are due to those who reached my heart with kind words, and gave me a brother’s hand.  I was not dead to my own degradation; but imprisonment left me no hope.  The sting of disappointment may pain your feelings; hope deferred may torture you here in a prison; the persecutions of enemies may madden your very soul; but when a mother turns coldly from you—­No, I will not say it, for I love her still—­” he hesitates, as the old sailor says, with touching simplicity, he never knew what it was to have a mother or father.  Having spread before the old man and his companions sundry refreshments he had ordered brought in, and received in return their thanks, he inquires of Spunyarn how it happened that he got into prison, and how it is that he remains here a fixture.

“I’ll tell you, Tom,” says the old sailor, commencing his story.  “We’d just come ashore-had a rough passage-and, says I to myself, here’s lay up ashore awhile.  So I gets a crimp, who takes me to a crib.  ‘It’s all right here-you’ll have snug quarters, Jack,’ says he, introducing me to the chap who kept it.  I gives him twenty dollars on stack, and gets up my chest and hammock, thinking it was all fair and square.  Then I meets an old shipmate, who I took in tow, he being hard ashore for cash.  ‘Let us top the meetin’ with a glass,’ says I.  ‘Agreed,’ says Bill, and I calls her on, the very best.  ‘Ten cents a glass,’ says the fellow behind the counter, giving us stuff that burnt as it went.  ‘Mister,’ says I, ’do ye want to poison a sailor?’ ‘If you no like him,’ says he, ’go get better somewhere else.’  I told him to give me back the twenty, and me dunnage.

“’You don’t get him-clear out of mine ‘ouse,’ says he,

“‘Under the peak,’ says I, fetching him a but under the lug that beached him among his beer-barrels.  He picked himself up, and began talking about a magistrate.  And knowing what sort of navigation a fellow’d have in the hands of that sort of land-craft, I began to think about laying my course for another port.  ‘Hold on here,’ says a big-sided land-lubber, seizing me by the fore-sheets.  ’Cast off there,’ says I, ‘or I’ll put ye on yer beam-ends.’