You can almost hear a sigh run through the ragged crowd. There comes into some of the pale, pinched faces a look of unutterable woe--the hope that welled up in the heart has sunk back again. There is no chance now. All the men wanted are engaged. As you turn and look at these men and study them--these, the unfortunate ones--you picture to yourself what the situation means to some of them. What are their thoughts as they turn away? Some of them, perhaps, have grown callous to suffering, hardened in despair. To-day's story is but the story of yesterday, and will be the story of tomorrow. There is on many of their faces that look of vacant unconcern to everything that comes of long familiarity with adversity. They have the look of the man who came into the French Court of Justice to take his trial for murdering his colleague at the galleys, and who had branded on his arm his name--'Never a chance!' Never a chance when a man gets that branded, not on his arm but on his heart; he takes bad luck very quietly. It is the good luck which would astonish and upset him. Some of the men, new-comers most of these, and not used to the game yet, show a certain rough emotion. It is fair to say it generally takes the form of an expletive. Others, men who look as though they had sunk by degrees from better positions, go away with a quivering lip and a flush of disappointment. If we could follow the thoughts of some of them, we should see far away, and perhaps where in some wretched room a wife and children sit cowering and shivering, waiting for the evening to come, when father will bring back the price of the day's work he has gone to seek. It must be with a heavy heart that his wife towards mid-day hears the sound of her husband's footsteps on the creaking stairs. This advent means no joy to her. That footstep tells its sad, cruel tale in one single creak. He has not been taken on at the Docks; another weary day of despair has to be sat through, another night she and the little ones must go hungry to bed. It must not be imagined that the men clear away directly who have not been engaged. Hope springs eternal in the human breast, and dozens of men still wait on in hope. It sometimes happens that a ship comes in late, or something happens, and more men are required. Then the ganger comes out and picks them from among the remaining crowd. Dozens of them hang about on the off-chance until two; after that it rarely happens any men are engaged, so the last brave few who have stood with wistful eyes for six or eight hours at the gate, turn slowly on their heels and go--God knows where!