This digression serves a simple purpose. It introduces a sporty gentleman of unique integrity whose friendship for Kenneth Gwynne flowered as time went on and ultimately bore such fruits as only the most favoured of men may taste. In passing he may be described as a pudgy, middle-aged individual, with mild blue eyes, an engaging smile, cherubic cheeks, sandy hair, and a highly pitched, far-reaching voice. He also had a bulbous nose resembling a large, ripe strawberry. Before coming to rest alongside the wharf, the Paul Revere indulged in a vast amount of noise. She whistled and coughed and sputtered and gasped with all the spasmodic energy of a choking monster; her bells kept up an incessant clangour; her wheel creaked and grovelled on the bed of the river, churning the water into a yellowish, foaming mass; her captain bellowed and barked, her crew yelped, her passengers shouted; the flat boats and perogues moored along the bank, aroused from their lassitude, began to romp gaily in the swirl of her crazy backwash; ropes whined and rasped and groaned, the deck rattled hollowly with the tread of heavy feet and the shifting of boxes and barrels and crates; the gangplank came down with a crash,--and so the mighty hundred and fifty ton leviathan of the Wabash came to the end of her voyage! There were a score of passengers on board, among them Barry Lapelle. He kept well in the rear of the motley throng of voyagers, an elegant, lordly figure, approached only in sartorial distinction by the far-famed gambler, Sylvester Hornaday, who likewise held himself sardonically aloof from the common horde, occupying a position well forward where, it might aptly be said, he could count his sheep as they straggled ashore. From afar Barry had recognized Viola standing among the people at the top of the bank, and his eager, hungry gaze had not left her. She, too, had caught sight of him long before the boat was near the landing. She waved her kerchief.