"Just as I should have thought," said Phineas, smiling at him. "Any chap with a little pride would want to pay his way: but these quarters are free. The Commission gives you so much a day, and free quarters. If I choose to have a companion, he don't have a call to pay for the rooms he uses; so that's wiped off. Then as to food: if you pay twenty-five cents a day for yourself, thirty for Sadie, seeing that she's only small, making fifty-five, and another ten for general expenses, there'll be nothing more to be said. How's that?" Jim thought it was extremely fair, as indeed it was, and at once agreed. The arrangement would allow of his putting by some twenty dollars a week, and at the end of a year he told himself that that would mount to a nice little sum. But again he heard a sound outside, and rose to his feet. "I'm sure I heard a footstep," he exclaimed. "There!" Phineas was doubtful, still he went to the door with him, and emerged on to the balcony. There was no one to be seen, and it was so dark that had there been anyone they would have escaped detection. They retired again, therefore, to the parlour, unaware of the figure skulking close down at the foot of the veranda. The man--for a man it undoubtedly was--rose to his feet stealthily, and stood there listening for a while, till he heard voices coming from the parlour. Then he clambered on to the veranda by way of the steps, and crept towards the square patch of light which indicated the gauze-covered window of the parlour. Slowly he raised his head till he was able to look into the room. As he did so, the lamplight flickering through fell upon his head and shoulders so that one could get some impression of his appearance. Decidedly short in stature, the man's face was swarthy, while the eyes seemed to be small and unusually bright, quite a feature of the face, in fact. He wore a long, flowing, black moustache, while his chin was covered with a stubbly growth a week old; but there was something about the face which immediately attracted one's attention more than any other feature. It was the mouth. The lips were parted in something resembling a snarl, showing a set of irregular white teeth, which with the lamplight shining on them looked cruel. A Spaniard one would have said at once. More than that, his features were familiar. Little did Jim guess that the ruffian staring in upon him was one of those who had fought for the boats in the waist of the foundering ship on which he had been voyaging to New York, and that he himself had incurred the man's hatred by a blow which, now that the matter was over, he could not remember having given. But one's actions in the heat of a contest often pass utterly unnoticed and unremembered. Jim had no idea now that this same man had dashed at him with a drawn knife, and that he had floored him with a straight blow from his fist between the eyes. However, if he had no recollection the ruffian had.