Some one cast off the sloop’s hawser; the mainsail was already up, and the craft began to drift out with the tide. This was the signal for a flutter of handkerchiefs and a chorus of cheers, during which Farmer Hayn plodded along the river-bank beside the sloop, regardless of mud, stones, marsh grass and cat-tails. He seemed to have no last injunctions for his boy; indeed, his occasional shouts were bestowed principally upon Sol Mantring, who stood at the wheel, and they had no more relation to Phil than to the Khan of Khiva. In like manner Phil seemed less interested in his father than in the maze of cordage at the foot of the mast. Nevertheless, when the river-bank ended at the shore of the bay, and could be followed no longer, the old man stood there, as Sol Mantring said afterward, “lookin’ as if he’d lost his last friend, never expected to git another, an’ he’d got ten year older all of a sudden,” and Phil, when he saw this, straightened in front of the friendly mast which hid him from the remainder of the crew, and threw kisses to his father, with the profusion of early childhood, as long as he could distinguish the dingy old coat and hat from the stones of similar hue that marked the little point. “The perils of the deep” were happily averted. Indeed, Phil would willingly have endured more could the wind have blown harder. The sloop finally made her pier in New York about dusk of the second day. Phil hastily donned his best suit, and as the part of the city in which the iron-merchants cluster was not far away, and Sol Mantring knew the streets of that portion of the city, Phil started, with minute directions from the skipper, to call on Mr. Tramlay. His singleness of purpose made him unconscious that he was acting in a manner not common to him, but as he climbed the side of the pier and hurried toward the mass of light before him Sol Mantring remarked to the remainder of the crew, consisting of two men,-- “I knowed it.” “Knowed what?” “He’s gal-struck. Got it bad.” Phil made his way up the principal thoroughfare from New York to Brooklyn, wondering at the thronged sidewalks and brilliantly-lighted shops, but he did not neglect to eye the street-names on corner-lamps. Soon he turned into a street which was part of his course as laid down by Sol; at the same time he turned from light to darkness, the change being almost appalling in its suddenness. Still he hurried on, and after another turn began to look for numbers on the fronts of buildings. His heart bounded within him as he suddenly saw, by the light of a street-lamp, the sign EDGAR TRAMLAY. In an instant his hand was on the door-knob; but the door did not open. Through the glass door he saw two or three dim lights within. Probably the proprietor was at his desk; perhaps, too, he should have knocked; so knock he did. “What d’ye want there, young feller?” shouted a policeman across the street. “I want to see Mr. Tramlay.”