I walked along, and as the last man in my mind was Maurice Blake, of course he was the first I had to run into. He was not looking well; I mean he was not looking as he should have looked. There was a reckless manner about him that no more belonged to him than a regularly quiet manner belonged to his friend Tommie Clancy. And I guessed why--he had been drinking. I had heard it already. Generally when a man starts to drink for the first time everybody talks about it. I was surprised, and I wished he hadn't. But we are always finding out new things about men. In my heart I was not blaming Maurice so much maybe as I should. I'd always been taught that drinking in excess was an awful habit, but some otherwise fine men I knew drank at times, and I wasn't going to blame Maurice till I knew more about it. And we can forgive a lot, too, in those we like. Maurice had no family to think of, and it must have been a blow to him not to get so fine a vessel as the Fred Withrow after he had been promised and had set his heart on it. And then to see her go to a man like Sam Hollis! and with the prospect of not getting another until a man like Withrow felt like saying you could. Everybody in Gloucester seemed to know that Withrow was doing all he could to keep Maurice from getting a vessel, and as the owners had banded together just before this for protection, as they called it, "against outside interference," and as Withrow was one of the largest owners and a man of influence beyond his vessel holdings, he was quite a power at this time. Maurice Blake was far from being drunk, however, when I met him this day. Indeed, I do not believe that in his most reckless hour up to this time he had ever lost control of himself so far as not to know pretty nearly what he was doing all the time; but certainly he had been drinking this day, and the drinking manner did not set well on him. Maurice was standing on the front steps of Mrs. Arkell's boarding-house when I saw him. It was Mrs. Arkell's granddaughter Minnie that married the wealthy Mr. Miner--a rather loud sort of man, who had been reported as saying that he would give her a good time and show her life. He may have given her a good time--I don't know--but he was dead in two years. He was supposed to be very rich--three or four millions--but on settling up there was less than half a million. Of course that wasn't bad--enough for Minnie to buy a big house next her grandmother's for a summer home, and enough to go off travelling whenever she pleased.