My mother had a phrase which set my teeth on edge--'Don't you talk, Martin, until you are earning your living'-- the sort of remark that stings and stays in a boy's memory as something unfair.

There was a great row in the end, one night at ten o'clock, when I was sixteen, and I left the house and tramped into London." "What in the world did you do ?" cried Stella.
"I shipped as a boy on a fruit-tramp for Valencia in Spain.

And I believe that saved my life.

For my lungs were beginning to be troublesome." The fruit-tramp had not been out more than two days when the fo'c'sle hands selected the lad, since he had some education, to be their spokesman on a deputation to the captain.

Martin Hillyard went aft with the men and put their case for better food and less violence.