One never-failing source of amusement I had during this long weary time, for even if hungry and cold young things will try to play, was in the Tower of London, into which I often dodged past the guards. I was often caught and driven back, but that only whetted my appetite for getting in. In my numerous visits I explored many portions of the old building that visitors never see, and I had many a good meal given me by the kind-hearted mess-cooks of the garrison. And by stealthily joining myself on to parties of visitors, I went the rounds of all the showplaces, into which entrance in those days could only be had by payment, and was mightily amused at hearing the same old story told with hardly an altered word by the "beef-eaters." I have mentioned this particularly, because opportunities for play in that stern and dingy quarter of London were very few, and when I got out of Thames Street for a brief space into the cloister-like atmosphere of the Tower, I really did feel as if I was in another world, and I never quite got rid of that eerie feeling when I was alone in some unfrequented corner, that I was moving among a crowd of ghosts, who in the past had suffered and died within those grim walls. One night I found myself belated in the horse armoury, and as I could not find my way out, and dared not call, for that I knew I had no business there, I curled myself up in a snug corner and went to sleep, awaking in the morning with the sun streaming into my eyes, and with a firm determination to run no such risk again. I got in there by climbing over a big gate with a cheval-de-frise on the top, and I got out the same way without being observed. I suppose if I had been caught my punishment would have been something mediæval, for the crime was, to say the least of it, unusual. And now the grim fact began to thrust itself upon me without possibility of mistake that it was hopeless ever to expect to get a ship by doing as I was doing. The vessels that got their crews in this way were all pitifully undermanned, and consequently whoever was chosen for employment in one of them must of necessity be strong and inured to hard work. Indeed, this choice was carried so far, that the skippers invariably felt the hands of the candidates, and if they were not calloused like the skin of a yam, the defect was fatal, supposing that there was any competition. My hands were only felt once, and that more I suspect as a matter of form, for nothing came of it.