Probably diverted with the touches of peculiar character he had detected in this singular pair of confederates, or possibly led by his own wayward humour, the stranger followed their footsteps. After turning from the water, they mounted a hill, the latter a little in the rear of his pilots, until he lost sight of them in a bend of the street, or rather road; for by this time, they were past even the little suburbs of the town. Quickening his steps, the barrister, as he had announced himself to be, was glad to catch a glimpse of the two worthies, seated under a fence several minutes after he had believed them lost. They were making a frugal meal, off the contents of a little bag which the white had borne under his arm and from which he now dispensed liberally to his companion, who had taken his post sufficiently nigh to proclaim that perfect amity was restored, though still a little in the back ground, in deference to the superior condition which the other enjoyed through favour of his colour. Approaching the spot, the stranger observed,— “If you make so free with the bag, my lads, your third man may have to go supperless to bed.” “Who hails?” said Dick, looking up from his bone, with an expression much like that of a mastiff when engaged at a similar employment. “I merely wished to remind you that you had another messmate,” cavalierly returned the other. “Will you take a cut, brother?” said the seaman, offering the bag, with the liberality of a sailor, the moment he fancied there was an indirect demand made on its contents. “You still mistake my meaning; on the wharf you had another companion.” “Ay, ay; he is in the offing there, overhauling that bit of a light-house, which is badly enough moored unless they mean it to shew the channel to your ox-teams and inland traders; hereaway, gentlemen, where you see that pile of stones which seems likely to be coming down shortly by-the-run.” The stranger looked in the direction indicated by the other, and saw the young mariner, to whom he had alluded, standing at the foot of a ruined tower, which was crumbling under the slow operations of time, at no great distance from the place where he stood. Throwing a handful of small change to the seamen, he wished them a better meal, and crossed the fence, with an apparent intention of examining the ruin also. “The lad is free with his coppers,” said Dick, suspending the movements of his teeth, to give the stranger another and a better look; “but, as they will not grow where he has planted them, S’ip, you may turn them over to my pocket. An off-handed and a free-handed chap that, Africa; but then these law-dealers get all their pence of the devil, and they are sure of more, when the shot begins to run low in the locker.”