"Well, what are you going to do?" Another shake of the head was the only answer, but as he met her sympathetic eyes, an inspiration came to him. "Lady," he said humbly, "you don't happen to know of a shack?" "Know of a what!" The touch of acerbity froze him at once. "Shack!" Coming to his assistance, "What on earth's that?" "Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man." The phrase was Klondyke's, and it came to him quite oddly at that moment in all its native purity. His mentor had a private collection of such phrases which he used to roll out for his own amusement when he went ashore. This was one. Henry Harper could see him now, pointing to a dingy card in a dingy window in a dingy street, in some miserable seaboard suburb, and he could hear him saying, "There you are, Sailor, lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man." Miss Burton pondered. And then the slow smile came again. "Well, if you really want lodgings clean and decent for a single man I suppose I must try and help you," she said graciously. "But I'm afraid I shan't be much use. They are not quite in my line." "No, lady." "Still, Fore Street is full of them. That's the second turn to the left and then the first on the right, and then the first on the right again." "Yes, lady." "You might try No. 5--or No. 7--or No. 9--but Fore Street's full of them." Miss Burton was really trying to be helpful, and the young seaman was very grateful to her, but Klondyke would have known at once that "she was talking out of the back of her neck." Armed with this valuable information, the young man got off his high stool at last, raised his fur cap once more, with a little of the unconscious grace of its original owner, said, "So long, lady," collected his bundle and went out by the side door. And in the meantime, the bar-lady, who had marked every detail of his going, hardly knew whether to laugh or to shed tears. This was the queerest being she had ever seen in her life. The Sailor managed to find Fore Street after taking several wrong turnings and asking his way three times. And then his difficulties really began. Fore Street was very narrow, very long, very gloomy, very dirty. In each of these qualities it seemed well able to compare with any street he had seen in Frisco, in Sydney, in Liverpool, or even in Port Said. But it didn't discourage him. After all he had never been used to anything else. The first house in Fore Street had a grimy card in a grimier window, exactly in the manner to rejoice the heart of Klondyke. Sailor, who had forgotten almost every syllable of "book-learning" he ever possessed--and at no time had he been the possessor of many--leaped at once to the conclusion that the legend on the card was, "Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man." Unfortunately it was, "Dressmaking done here."