Harry told the driver to wait; and then, in a troubled state of mind, he followed his conductor in and out by wharf and crazy waterside shed, where paths were wet and muddy, and the few people seen looked poverty-stricken and repulsive. Tall walls heaved upward to shut out the light and air from the low, damp dwellings. A few yards farther and there was the din of iron as rivets were driven cherry-red into the plates of some huge metallic sea-ark. And again a little farther, and they were where corn ran in teeming golden cascades out of shoots to lighter or granary. Farther still, and the rap, rap, incessant rap, of the caulkers' hammers were heard as they drove in the tarry oakum between the seams of the wooden vessels. Iron-workers, black and grimy, painters, carpenters, rope-makers, all were busy here. Steam hissed and roared and shrieked, as it escaped from some torturing engine in white wreaths, like the ghost of dead water hurrying to its heaven of clouds far above the grimy earth. All forced itself upon Harry Clayton's brain, as he followed his conductor to where there were loose stones and mud beneath his feet, the black rushing river on his left hand, and on his right slimy piles, black and green and brown, with the bolts protruding, and iron rings hanging from their sides, all eaten and worn away. There was a channel leading to some dock close by, and foul water was babbling noisily down through a pair of sluice-falls, and this too struck him painfully as the plashing fell upon his ear. All passed away, though, but the one shudder-engendering idea of that which he had come to see; for a rough harsh voice, proceeding from another amphibious muddy being, said:-- "You've found some one, then?" "Ay!" was the response from Harry Clayton's conductor; and making to the right, the young man found himself beside a low, wet, half-rotten shed. Volume 3, Chapter V. WHAT THE SHED HELD. Harry Clayton felt his breath come thick and fast as he caught sight of the low place by his side. It was a boat-house evidently, and was roughly built of the hole-filled planks torn from the side of some ship taken to the breaker's yard. The door was secured with a large rusty padlock, and the amphibious-looking man, now introduced as "my mate," had evidently been doing duty as a sentry, seated upon a post, and smoking a long clay pipe, troubled not in the slightest degree that within a few feet, dripping, soddened, battered by contact with pier and pile, lay the nameless dead, separated from him only by that badly-hung door facing the river, and through whose rifts and cracks and treenail-holes the interior could easily have been viewed. The strongest of nerve might have shuddered as the man who had been keeping guard noisily unfastened the padlock, drew it from the staple, and was about to throw open the door of the hovel, when Harry abruptly arrested him. "Are you sure that this answers to the description given?" he said, hoarsely.