Two or three fishermen, and one other man slightly apart, stood waiting at the foot of the beach. Benjie ran the boat ashore, high on the crest of a wave; then jumped into the wash and lifted out half a dozen prawn-nets with their lines and cork buoys. "That'll lighten her," he said. "Now haul!"

His round sailor's cap was perched on one side of his head; his torn jumper was askew ; seawater ran in streams from his patched greenish-blue trousers, which also were askew; and his wrinkled face, within its fringe of grey beard, was noticeably haggard after the night's toil. With his arms spread wide over the hoops of the nets and his head bent down by their weight, he almost bumped into the stranger. Whereupon he pulled up short. Screwing himself still farther sideways, he quizzed the man; mocked him silently with deeply erows footed blue eyes, at once both childlike and shrewd.

"Who be you then?" he in

quired, placing his prawn-nets very deliberately on the shingle. "Who be you? "Tisn't often the likes o' you starchcollar sort o' people comes down for to help lend a hand."

The fishermen drew nearer.

"N'eet any o' our own sort nuther," flashed Benjie, "so early as this in the day."

The stranger, a man in a bowler hat and a dark stuff overcoat of indifferent fit, cleared his throat.

""Tis the bogey man, Benjie the 'Spector!" put in Bill Prowse breathlessly.

"I knows that," said Benjie with scorn. "I know'd 'en all right. How long is it since you've a-favoured us wi' a visit, sir? Eh?"

"Let me see your crabs and lobsters," demanded the bogey man.

"Hold hard, Mister 'Spector. Us been shrimping-prawning you calls it—prawning wi' the boat - nets-an' the prawns I catches I never shows to nobody. I an't got no lobster pots. They was washed ashore

an' broken up last October gales, an' I can't afford to replace 'em."

"But you catch lobsters in your prawn-nets . . ."

"For sure us do."

"Well, I want to see them." "There they be then." Benjie pointed towards the boat and made as if to lift up his nets.

"Show them to me," said the Inspector, taking a measure from his pocket.

"You be the 'Spector, ben' 'ee?"

"No nonsense, now," replied the Inspector irritably. "It's my duty to inspect the catches in this fishery district."

"Very well, then; inspect away. If 'tis your duty, you can't help o' it. You'm paid for the same. But 'tisn't my duty for to help 'ee. I bain't paid for thic. There's the boat."

Benjie scratched his whiskers: "And lookse here, Mister 'Spector. These here's here's me prawns what I've a-laboured for this night. Be so kind as to look."

He took a small canvas bag from the bows of the boat, walked into the sea, and shook out its contents. The few prawns that stuck in it by their spines he picked out and threw into the water after the rest. "There!" he said amiably. "Nort but prawns there. You see'd that. But you didn't see how many Benjamin have a-catched, an' you never won't; n'eet they there starch-collar jokers nuthergen'lemen they calls them

selves-what goes downshore disturbing o' it an' catching a man's living for sport, so they says. Poaching I calls it. 'Twas some o' they set 'ee on to me 'cause I won't tell 'em what I catches, nor where I shoots my nets. Iss, 'twas! I knows. There's the boat. You can b-y well 'spect the rest o' what I catched. I be going in house for me dinner an' a couple o' hours' sleep. An't had a bite since yesterday noon nor any sleep this three nights. I on'y hope your duty won't never bring 'ee to keeping a roof over your head wi' shrimping-an' measuring the crabs and lobsters what you catches wi' an inch - rule in the dark."

Leaving the boat and the nets where they were, Benjie shouldered some drift-wood and strode up the beach.

"I shouted to 'ee t'other side o' rocks," Bill Prowse protested.

Benjie stopped and turned, his bearing and appearance that of an ancient prophet. "Hell about your shouting! Let 'en 'spect, I say. I'll get in out o' it."

He did.

The other fishermen stood with their hands in their pockets on top of the sea-wall, while the bogey man routed about in the boat. Undersized lobsters had been thrown for'ard, among some old cordage and bottles of tea; crabs were scuttling all over and under the bottom-boards and stern-sheets. Most of them were wildsters, but the bogey man did find half a dozen or so

of tamesters. Doubtful specimens he measured carefully. When he had finished, he put the under-sized shell-fish into one of Benjie's sacks.

"An' the sack alone's-wuth half a pint," Bill Prowse remarked in the Bogey man's hearing. "Ol' Benjie's so

honest an' harmless a man as ever put to sea, for all he has his say out when he's a-minded. He've a-worked too hard all his life for to deserve a turn-out like this here, I reckon. I tried to warn 'en, but Benjie won't never hear...

"What be talking 'bout. You can swim, can't 'ee? Could ha' done that-could ha' swimmed out to 'en."

Benjie was all but late for court. He had gone west downshore to pick up some driftwood for firing, and an unexpected easterly breeze gave him a pull home against wind and chop such as few men would have attempted. No time was left him to change his clothes.

Vivian Maddicke was on the bench. He always is. He takes his duties as a gentleman and a magistrate almost as seriously as he takes himself. That is to say, he does try, at considerable personal inconvenience, to administer justice, to hold the balance between an efficient and respectful police force and an unruly lower class. He spends, indeed, not a little of his abundant leisure in pointing out

VOL. CLXXXIX.—NO. MCXLIV.

to the poor the advantages of hard work, and in impressing upon them his own view of right and wrong. Hence it is, possibly, that his subscriptions and charities and justice hardly bring him a fair return in popularity.

When Benjie entered the court in his ragged discoloured longshore rig, a faint expression of disgust passed over Vivian Maddicke's pale but otherwise healthy face. He ordered two windows to be opened. "Let us have some fresh air," he said. "Never mind the draught."

Benjie, though he appeared to be examining the nail-heads in the floor, was all the time looking up at the bench from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. He understood the slur very

N

well. Still fingering nervously his old round cap, he turned a pair of candid eyes full on Vivian Maddicke, and Vivian Maddicke, who had been gazing benevolently round the courtroom, turned his face to the papers on his desk.

The case proceeded. There was no legal defence: Benjie had not purchased legal advice. "When I tells 'em how us be situated..." he had said. But he was too much on his guard to give any useful evidence, even on his own behalf. The undersized crabs and lobsters were produced-it is wonderful how they fall off in appearance when they have died otherwise than in boiling water. Vivian Maddicke took the opportunity of remarking, "I thought we should require some fresh air."

that it was not a large sum (murmurs of disapproval from fishermen at the back of the court), and that fishery inspectors were not to be trifled with or defied. Furthermore, he impressed upon Benjie in the most kindly manner possible that little lobsters grow into big ones.

“Iss, sir,” said Benjie, "but the little ones be better eating if people only know'd it, same as mackerel."

With a passing reference to the depletion of the North Sea fisheries, the magistrate stated it as a fact, that if the fish were not in the sea they could not be caught out of it.

"For sure, sir!" Benjie assented. Under cover of being ready and willing to learn, he was edging in his remarks skilfully; for it was by no means the first time he had tackled the gentry who think they can teach fishermen their trade. With every show of respect, moreover, he was capturing the laugh in court.

Fishery Boards, Vivian Maddicke continued patiently, were created to protect the fisheries. Their regulations were framed in the interests of the fishermen themselves, so that there might be more fish caught.

"Don't you believe that, sir," burst forth Benjie with intense conviction. "Do you think the likes o' they makes rules and regylations so that the likes o' can catch more fish?

'Tisn't likely! They bain't afeard o' us not catching fish. What they'm afeard o' is that they won't hae no fish to eat, or won't hae 'em