Bayard led his man down towards the wharves. It was dark, there, and still; there was a secluded spot, which he knew of, under a salt-house at the head of a long pier but seldom used at night. The fine rain was uncertain, and took moods. As the two came down the larynx of the Alley, the drizzle had dripped off into a soft mist. Bayard heard Captain Hap across the street giving utterance to his favorite phrase:-- “It’s comin’ on thick; so thick it has stems to it.” The captain looked after the minister and the drunkard with disapproval in his keen, dark eyes. “Better look out, Mr. Bayard!” he called, with the freedom of a nurse too recently dismissed not to feel responsible for his patient. “It ain’t no night for you to be settin’ round on the docks. You cough, sir! Him you’ve got in tow ain’t worth it--no, nor twenty like him!” “That’s a fact,” said Job humbly, stopping short. “Come on, Job,” Bayard answered decidedly. So they came under the salt-house, and sat down. Both were silent at first. Job wiped off an old fish-keg with the sleeve of his jumper, and offered this piece of furniture to the minister; the fisherman perched himself on the edge of a big broken pile which reared its gray head above the wharf; the rising tide flapped with a sinister sound under his feet which hung over, recklessly swinging. Job looked down into the black water. He was man enough still to estimate what he had done, and miserable enough to quench the shame and fire in him together by a leap. Men do such things, in crises such as Job had reached, far oftener than we may suppose. Job said nothing. Bayard watched him closely. “Well, Job?” he said at last; not sternly, as he had spoken at Trawl’s door. “I haven’t touched it before, sir, not a drop till last night,” said Job with sullen dreariness. “I was countin’ on it how I should see you the fust time since--I thought of it all the way home from Georges’. I was so set to see you I couldn’t wait to get ashore to see you. I took a clean jump from the dory to the landin’. I upsot the dory and two men.... Mr. Bayard, sir, the cap’n’s right. I ain’t wuth it. You’d better let me drownded off the Clara Em.” “Tell me how it happened,” said Bayard gently. Job shook his head. “You know’s well’s I, sir. We come ashore, and Trawl, he had one of his ---- runners to the wharf. Ben was there, bossin’ the ---- job.” The minister listened to this profanity without proffering a rebuke. His teeth were set; he looked as if he would have liked to say as much, himself.