its sphere altogether."

"I am struck with the truth of that remark," observed the rector; "and
the more so because I descry a male member of our race approaching, with
a hat--at once the emblem and the crown of sound reason. Away with all
fallacies; it is Church-warden Cheeseman!"

CHAPTER XIV

A HORRIBLE SUGGESTION

"Can you guess what has brought me down here in this hurry?" Lord
Nelson asked Admiral Darling, having jumped like a boy from his yellow
post-chaise, and shaken his old friend's broad right hand with his
slender but strenuous left one, even as a big bell is swung by a thin
rope. "I have no time to spare--not a day, not an hour; but I made up my
mind to see you before I start. I cannot expect to come home alive, and,
except for one reason, I should not wish it."

"Nonsense!" said the Admiral, who was sauntering near his upper gate,
and enjoying the world this fine spring morning; "you are always in
such a confounded hurry! When you come to my time of life, you will know
better. What is it this time? The Channel fleet again?"

"No, no; Billy Blue keeps that, thank God! I hate looking after a school
of herring-boats. The Mediterranean for me, my friend. I received the
order yesterday, and shall be at sea by the twentieth."

"I am very glad to hear it, for your sake. If ever there was a restless
fellow--in the good old times we were not like that. Come up to the
house and talk about it; at least they must take the horses out. They
are not like you; they can't work forever."

"And they don't get knocked about like me; though one of them has lost
his starboard eye, and he sails and steers all the better for it. Let
them go up to the stable, Darling, while you come down to the beach with
me. I want to show you something."

"What crotchet is in his too active brain now?" the elder and stronger
man asked himself, as he found himself hooked by the right arm, and led
down a track through the trees scarcely known to himself, and quite
out of sight from the village. "Why, this is not the way to the beach!
However, it is never any good to oppose him. He gets his own way so
because of his fame. Or perhaps that's the way he got his fame. But to
show me about over my own land! But let him go on, let him go on."

"You are wondering, I dare say, what I am about," cried Nelson, stopping
suddenly, and fixing his sound eye--which was wonderfully keen, though
he was always in a fright about it--upon the large an