He had been here before many times in his rare intervals of leisure—the brief pauses in his long day’s work—and had watched the departing steamers with a keen envy of the travellers they carried—a longing for quiet old German cities—for long tranquil summer days dawdled away in the churches and picture-galleries of quaint old Belgian towns—for idle wanderings in Brittany’s sleepy villages, by the sunlit Rance,—for anything, in short, rather than the dusty beaten track of his own dull life. Of course this was before he knew Lucille; all his aspirations nowadays included her. On this bright sunny afternoon, a west wind blowing freshly down the river, he lounged with folded arms, and watched the busy life of that silent highway with a sense of supreme relief at having ended his day’s work. The wharf itself was quiet enough at this time. A few porters loitered about; one or two idlers seemed on the look-out, like Lucius, for nothing in particular. He heard the porters say something about the Polestar, from Hamburg—heard without heeding, for his gaze had wandered after a mighty vessel—an emigrant-ship, he felt assured—which had just emerged from the docks, and was being towed down the broadening river by a diminutive black tug, which made no more of the business than if that floating village had been a cockle-shell. He was still watching this outward-bound vessel, when a loud puffing and panting and snorting arose just below him. A bell rang: the porters seemed to go suddenly mad; a lot of people congregated from nowhere in particular, and the wharf was all life and motion, frantic hurry and eagerness. The Polestar steamer had just arrived from Hamburg, three hours after her time, as he heard the porters tell each other. Lucius looked down at that vessel, with her cargo of commonplace humanity—looked listlessly, indifferently—while the passengers came scrambling, up the gangway, all more or less dilapidated by the sea voyage. But presently Lucius gave a great start. Just beneath him, among those newly disembarked voyagers, he beheld a little fat man, with a round comfortable florid face, close shaven—a supremely calm individual, amidst all that turmoil and hurry, carrying a neat little shiny portmanteau, and resolutely refusing all assistance from porters. Lucius had last seen this man on the shores of the Pacific. That round contented Saxon visage belonged to none other than Absalom Schanck.