ey were to be
deposited in the crypt of the Chapel--we calmly chucked them away on a
couple of trestles, under a stairway in Bancroft Hall, as we would an
old broom or a tin can. That's _our_ way of honoring the only Naval
Commander we had in the Revolution. It would have been better, much
better, had we left him to rest in the quiet seclusion of his grave in
France--lost, save in memory, with the halo of the past and privacy of
death around him."

"And why didn't we finish the work?" said Croyden. "Why bring him here,
with the attendant expense, and then stop, just short of completion?
Why didn't we inter him in the Chapel (though, God save me from burial
there), or any place, rather than on trestles under a stairway in a
midshipmen's dormitory?"

"Because the appropriation was exhausted, or because the Act wasn't
worded to include burial, or because the Superintendent didn't want the
bother, or because it was a nuisance to have the remains around--or
some other absurd reason. At all events, he is there in the cellar, and
he is likely to stay there, till Bancroft Hall is swallowed up by the
Bay. The junket to France, the parade, the speeches, the spectacular
part are over, so, who cares for the entombment, and the respect due
the distinguished dead?"

"I don't mean to be disrespectful," he observed, "but it's hard luck to
have one's bones disturbed, after more than a hundred years of
tranquillity, to be conveyed clear across the Atlantic, to be orated
over, and sermonized over, and, then, to be flung aside like old junk
and forgot. However, we have troubles of our own--I know I have--more
real than Paul Jones! He may be glad he's dead, so he won't have any to
worry over. In fact, it's a good thing to be dead--one is saved from a
heap of worry."

She looked at him, without replying.

"What's the use?" he said. "A daily struggle to procure fuel sufficient
to keep up the fire."

"What's the use of anything! Why not make an end of life, at once?" she
asked.

"Sometimes, I'm tempted," he admitted. "It's the leap in the dark, and
no returning, that restrains, I reckon--and the fact that we must face
it alone. Otherwise----"

She laughed softly. "Otherwise death would have no terrors! You have
begged the question, or what amounts to it. But, to return to
Annapolis; what else did you see?"

"You have been there?"

"Many times."

"Then you know what I saw," he replied. "I had no wonderful
adventures. This isn't