boarding-house, the green door of which bore no distinguishing mark, was known in the neighbourhood and far along the river below bridge, as ‘Old Plugger’s.’ Whether there was a Plugger still in existence or not, it may be surmised that the original and veteran possessor of that name had enjoyed a widespread connection among mariners, for most of the present inmates of the house were seafaring persons. Most, but not all. And of the nautical boarders at Plugger’s none were common seamen. The title of ‘Captain’ was in as constant requisition within its weather-bleached porch, overgrown with scarlet-runners, as it could possibly be at a military club farther west. Two-thirds of the swarthy, restless-eyed customers claimed to have a right to that honorary prefix, or at the least to have been ‘officers’ of one branch or another of the mercantile marine. The remainder, apparently attracted to the spot by the smell of the tar and paint from the neighbouring wharfs, or by the sight of the forest of masts that rose up between them and the Middlesex shore, or by congenial company, had much to say as to gulches and placers and auriferous river-bars, and gold-dust which, after months of toil and hunger, had been fooled away in a week’s mad revel; and colossal fortunes that could infallibly be realised by any one who had a pitiful thousand pounds at command, and would be guided by sound advice as to its investment. It was not a cheap boarding-house, according to the tariff of such establishments, this one of Old Plugger’s. Rivals and humbler imitators held it in respect, for it was a thriving concern. Its rooms seldom stood empty for long, and its frequenters somehow found the wherewithal to pay their score. It was not a noisy place; by no means comparable to the riotous dens about Tiger Bay and elsewhere, or to the sailors’ publics at Wapping or Rotherhithe; but now and then there was a din from within it, a shouting of hoarse voices, a trampling of heavy feet, a crashing of woodwork or of glass, and then silence. And if just then a patrol of the police happened to be passing down the main street, and some one said that the disturbance was at Old Plugger’s, the sergeant would shake his head as meaningly as Lord Burleigh in the _Critic_. But nobody seemed to care to inquire too curiously into the nature of the altercation in what was euphemistically known, among the trades-folk of the vicinity, as the captains’ boarding-house.