When the tide is high the cargoes are snatched from huge lighters moored close to their walls, swung through gaping doors opening on the several floors, and then whirled back on hand trucks into dark recesses. When the tide is out these great lighters go aground on a wide, continuous mud bank hugging the foundation bricks, where, until the repentant tide returns, they lie inert, powerless, and lopsided.

To find, therefore, a coign of vantage from which a sketch expressing in the slightest degree the whirl and rush of the river traffic could be made, was difficult. After entering various doors giving on the street, tramping over acres of ground floor which seemingly promised possible exits overlooking the river, only to be confronted by colossal stacks of packing-boxes holding cans of kerosene, crates of cheese, heaps of woodenware, breastworks of tea, salt, and coffee; I brought up at last against a brick wall with every iron shutter closed tight as a burial vault.

A gleam of light shining through a mere slit, a sort of forest opening between huge piles of merchandise, finally caught my eye, and with the help of a stevedore detailed by the manager, who carried my traps, I rounded, squared, and enfiladed the conglomerate mass

representing the products of half the globe and emerged in triumph on a door-sill to which was fastened a landing plank about three feet wide.

Here I could sit, so the stevedore said, until the tide turned, which would be along about noon and maybe later, when I should have to go whether the tide was on time or not, "as it was Saturday, and everything was shut chucka-block on Saturday at twelve, with nothing doing any more until seven o'clock on Monday morning."

My experience has taught me that you can sometimes wheedle a janitor, influence a Bobby, and occasionally persuade a verger to let you out by a side door before service is over; but I have never yet been able to induce any nativeborn Englishman, no matter what the compensation or what his occupation, to work five minutes after twelve o'clock of a Saturday afternoon. Up to that hour, then, my knockoff-at-noon stevedore would take upon himself the care of my person, seeing that no bale of cotton, or sling, full of tea, or other dangerous package, swung skyward from the bowels of a lighter, came in contact with any portion of my anatomy.

Furthermore he would impart to me certain valuable data, he having lived around here all his life and knowing every turn of the river.

That was and he pointed across the river Cannon Station with the railroad bridge running into it; farther up was Southwark Bridge, an old iron bridge that was so old and crumbly that they didn't "let anybody walk across it"

I could just see it through the arches of the big Bridge; and that boat letting off steam was the Margate boat, and if he didn't miss his guess it would be "as full as a tick" on its next trip, being Saturday; and that half-round thing sticking up into the sky over the edge of the railroad bridge was the dome of St. Paul's; and London Bridge, of course, was right over there to the left.

This last piece of valuable information was the most important of all, for there, lying before me, was the very stretch of the river where Gaffer plied his ghastly trade.

A rumbling behind me of closing shutters warned me of the fatal hour of noon.

"Time's up, sir," was all he said as he reached for the iron ring on the wide-open door. "I'll be late for the boat. Thank ye, sir. Come on Monday and don't forget to ask for me. Thank ye, sir, I'll smoke it to-morrow," and he was off.

Once outside, I wandered about the streets upon which the sudden chill of idleness had