er uncle
the admiral and his career--"distinguished, but wandering," as she
summarized it.

I remember little of this lesson save that it dispensed--wisely, no
doubt--with the use of the terrestrial globe; that it included a
description of the admiral's country seat in Roscommon, and an
account of a ball given by him to celebrate Mrs. Stimcoe's arrival at
a marriageable age, with a list of the notabilities assembled; and
that it ended in her rapping Doggy Bates over the head with a ruler,
for biting his nails. From that moment anarchy reigned.

It reigned for a week. I have wondered since how our six day-boys
managed to refrain from carrying home a tale which must have brought
their parents down upon us _en masse_. Great is schoolboy honour--
great, and more than a trifle quaint. In any case, the parents must
have been singularly unobservant or singularly slow to reason upon
what they observed; for we sent their backward sons home to them each
night in a mask of ink.

Saturday came, and brought the usual half-holiday. We boarders
celebrated it by a raid upon the back yard of Rogerses--Bully Stokes
being temporarily incapacitated by chicken-pox--and possessed
ourselves, after a gallant fight, of Rogerses' football. Superior
numbers drove us back to our own door, where--at the invocation of
all the householders along Delamere Terrace--the constable
intervened; but we retained the spoil.

At the shut of dusk, as we kicked the football in triumph about our
own back yard, Mrs. Stimcoe sought me out with a letter to be
conveyed to Captain Branscome. I took it and ran.

The lamplighter, going his rounds, met me at the corner of Killigrew
Street and directed me to the alley in which the captain's lodgings
lay. The alley was dark, but a little within the entrance my eyes
caught the glimmer of a highly polished brass door-knocker, and upon
this I rapped at a venture.

Captain Branscome opened to me. The house had no passage. Its front
door opened directly upon a whitewashed room, with a round table in
the centre, covered with charts. On the table, too, stood a lamp,
the light of which dazzled me for a moment. On the walls hung the
captain's sword of honour (above the mantelpiece), a couple of
bookshelves, well stored, and a panel with a ship upon it--a brig in
full sail--carved in high relief and painted. My eyes, however, were
not for these, but for a man who sat at the table, poring over the
charts, and li