lan,--was a sailor; and I know I
wanted to go to sea too, just like you, before I was sent to college.
So, that accounts for your liking for it--eh?"

"I suppose so," I answered without thinking, just echoing his words like
a parrot; although, now I come to consider the thing fully, I really can
see no other reason than this hereditary instinct to account for the
passionate longing that possessed me at that period to be a sailor, as,
beyond reading Robinson Crusoe like other boys, I was absolutely
ignorant of the life and all concerning it. Indeed, up to then,
although it may seem hardly credible, I had only once actually seen the
sea, and a ship in the distance--far-away out in the offing of what
appeared to me an immeasurable expanse of space. This was when father
took my sister Nellie and me for a day's visit to Brighton. It was a
wonderful experience to us, from the contrast the busy town on the coast
offered to the quiet country village where we lived and of which my
father was the pastor, buried in the bosom of the shires away from the
bustling world, and out of contact with seafaring folk and those that
voyage the deep.

Yes, there's no doubt of it. That love for the sea, which made me wish
to be a sailor as naturally as a cat loves cream, ran in my blood, and
must have been bred in my bone, as father suggested.

Before, however, we could either of us pursue the psychological
investigation of this theory any further, our argument was interrupted
by my mother's coming to where we were standing under the elm-tree at
the top of the garden.

Father at once put away his pipe on her approach, always respecting and
honouring her beyond all women even as he loved her; and he greeted her
with a smile of welcome.

"Well, dear?" said he sympathetically as she held out the letter she
carried and then placed her hand on his arm confidingly, turning her
anxious face up to his in the certainty of finding him ready to share
her trouble whatever it might be. "Now tell me all about it."

"It has come, Robert!" she exclaimed, nestling nearer to him.

"Yes, I see, dear," he replied, glancing at the open sheet; for they had
no secrets from each other, and she had opened the letter already,
although it had been addressed to him. Then, looking at me, father
added: "This is from Messrs. Splice and Mainbrace, the great ship-
brokers of Leadenhall Street, to whom I wrote some time since, about
taking you in one of their vess