'I beg your pardon,' he said, making room on the bench where he was sitting for a man who had stood, with rather an ostentatious air of expecting to have room made for him, just in front of Mr. Foster, 'I didn't see that you wanted a place;' and the man sat down, after some words of course. He was a slight man, who carried himself awkwardly, with high shoulders and sunken chest and stooping head; he was of dark complexion, had straight black hair, which fitted his head like a thatch, and a black beard, but he was painfully nearsighted, and wore spectacles of such power that his eyes, seen through them, seemed to be buried in cavities altogether disproportionate to the other feature. He was curiously ill-dressed, not only as regards the fabric of his garments, which was incongruous, but also as regards their fit, which had not the slightest reference to either his height or his breadth. They were formed of two or three kinds of cloth of different degrees of coarseness, but all of the cheapest description, and all rusty black, which associates itself in one's mind with the Scripture-reading, amateur-preaching, charity-letter writing, and tract-distributing class. He wore shoes, which might have been made for any one of the passengers on board the ferry with as much reference to their fit as for him, and his gray cotton gloves were too long in the fingers and too wide in the wrists. In the dog's-eared pocket of his black cloth waistcoat he carried a clumsy silver watch, attached to a frayed piece of black braid; and a shiny leather case, which had evidently been replenished with tracts since he had lavishly distributed his morning supply of that improving order of literature, protruded from the breast-pocket of his shapeless coat. Mr. Foster glanced at the stranger as one naturally glances at a person to whom one has done a passing civility, and was not far out in his estimate of his social position and professional character; not that he was familiar with the precise type, but the character was too ostentatiously put forward to be mistaken. A respectable-looking stout woman, with a large basket, which she held tenaciously upon her knees, to her extreme discomfort, no doubt considering it much too precious to be intrusted to the open space of deck at her feet, got into conversation with Mr. Foster's neighbour, with all the facility accorded by custom to social intercourse with gentlemen of his profession, and after a few minutes Mr. Foster found himself taking an interest in the conversation. It referred to the physical and spiritual needs of the water-side population, and the man spoke in a sensible and straightforward way, quite devoid of cant, which pleased Mr. Foster, and was singularly at variance with his appearance--that of the most conventional theatrical type, which one is almost irresistibly tempted to associate with imposture and hypocrisy.