"What!" he said, "let him buy the board? Why, he's had half a dozen boards for that sign a'ready!" "Half a dozen?" I said. "Six boards? What did he do with them?" "Ate 'em!" said Grandfather Nat, and laughed the louder when I stared. CHAPTER VIII STEPHEN'S TALE I found it quite true that one might eat the loose sugar wherever he judged it clean enough--as most of it was. And nothing but Grandfather Nat's restraining hand postponed my first bilious attack. Thus it was that I made acquaintance with the Highway, and with the London Docks, in their more picturesque days, and saw and delighted in a thousand things more than I can write. Port was drunk then, and hundreds of great pipes lay in rows on a wide quay where men walked with wooden clubs, whacking each pipe till the "shive" or wooden bung sprang into the air, to be caught with a dexterity that pleased me like a conjuring trick. And many a thirsty dock-labourer, watching his opportunity, would cut a strip of bread from his humble dinner as he strolled near a pipe, and, absorbed in the contemplation of the indefinite empyrean, absently dip his sippet into the shive-hole as he passed; recovering it in a state so wet and discoloured that its instant consumption was imperative. And so at last we came away from the docks by the thoroughfare then called Tanglefoot Lane; not that that name, or anything like it, was painted at the corner; but because it was the road commonly taken by visitors departing from the wine-vaults after bringing tasting-orders. As we passed Blue Gate on our way home, I saw, among those standing at the corner, a coarse-faced, untidy woman, talking to a big, bony-looking man with a face so thin and mean that it seemed misplaced on such shoulders. The woman was so much like a score of others then in sight, that I should scarce have noted her, were it not that she and the man stopped their talk as we passed, with a quick look, first at my grandfather, and then one at the other; and then the man turned his back and walked away. Presently the woman came after us, walking quickly, glancing doubtfully at Grandfather Nat as she passed; and at last, after twice looking back, she turned and waited for us to come up. "Beg pardon, Cap'en Kemp," she said in a low, but a very thick voice, "but might I speak to you a moment, sir?" My grandfather looked at her sharply. "Well," he said, "what is it?" "In regards to a man as sold you a watch las' night----" "No," Grandfather Nat interrupted with angry decision, "he didn't." "Beg pardon, sir, jesso sir--'course not; which I mean to say 'e sold it to a man near to your 'ouse. Is it brought true as that party--not meanin' you, sir, 'course not, but the party in the street near your 'ouse--is it brought true as that party'll buy somethink more--somethink as I needn't tell now, sir, p'raps, but somethink spoke of between that party an' the other party--I mean the party as sold it, an' don't mean you, sir, 'course not?"