“Not at all! Not at all!” he replied. “We found after spending a few nights with Waters that we were as a small flock of babbling goslings, or like little twittering snow birds on a limb, so to speak, compared to the voracious human hawks and grand larceny specialists in the neighboring towers, from the tops of which no Jolly Rogers flew--they were too smooth for that. The church was quite the appropriate retreat for our party, considering the character of the neighborhood, and it might not be out of place to suggest that we would not have been safe even there if we had had money. The gold of a stranger in these parts would disappear like autumn leaves before the wind. A doubloon dropped anywhere in the vicinity in the day time would scarcely have got to the sidewalk and might have caused instantaneous bloodshed. It would be like tossing a yellow canary bird into a cage of wild cats. [Illustration: “LIKE LITTLE TWITTERING SNOW BIRDS ON A LIMB”] “Waters said that the Savior would not have been admitted to Trinity Church on Sunday on account of his clothes, and if he should appear and stand at the corner of Broad and Wall for two minutes somebody would take away his halo, his sandals and his robe. He would be divested of everything that was his and be cast adrift in the darkness when the day was done. “I may say, parenthetically, there was one Spirit we never met in the neighborhood. In fact none of our party ever seemed to have been in its presence at any time. “At night we saw troops of sinister and ravenous shades prowling among the gloomy evil hives in this lair of Mammon like famished wolves upon ground where they had once killed. “Waters continued his revelations, with few interruptions, for a month or more, for it took a long time to communicate his extensive knowledge of the inner workings of the up-to-date methods of gold accumulation. When he had finished I must admit that we shuddered at the damnable realities he portrayed. At one point we who had head coverings removed them reverently and bowed to Waters. Teach threw his semblance of a black wide brimmed hat into the air, with a hollow ghastly yell that brought many curious, pale peering faces up from among the old crumbling stones in the church yard.