d on as a most promising officer. But now...!

"Oh, little did my mother ken,
The day she cradled me,"

(might he have wailed), in what dire scrape the recklessness inherent in
her boy would land him.

"I _thought_ you'd take my terms," said the landlady, when she came into
the room. "Faith! an' I've got the pick o' the basket! Well, come along,
my joker; we'll be off to the parson. But you'll take my arm all the
way, d'ye see!--as is right an' nat'ral for bride and bridegroom. You
ain't agoin' to give _me_ the slip afore the knot's tied, I can tell
you. Not if _I_ knows it, young man."

Broken clergymen, broken by drink or what not, ready to go through
anything for a consideration, were never hard to find in those days in a
town such as Portsmouth, and all too soon the ceremony, binding enough,
so far as Watty could see, was over. Then the new-made wife insisted,
before the three lads left her, that she should stand them a good
dinner, and as much wine as they cared to drink to the health of bride
and bridegroom.

"An' now," she said to her husband ere the youngsters departed, "I aint
agoin' to send my man to sea with empty pockets. Put _that_ in your
purse!"

But Watty would have none of the five guineas she tried to force on him.

"Well, I think none the worse of you for that," she cried. "Come, give
us a kiss, at anyrate." And with a shudder Watty Scott saluted his
bride.

Never did the grey waters of the English Channel look more cheerless
than they appeared to one unhappy midshipman of H.M.S. _Sirius_ next
morning, as the frigate beat down channel in the teeth of a strong
westerly breeze; never before had life seemed to him a thing purposeless
and void of hope. "To have and to hold from this day forward, for better
for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and
to cherish, till death us do part." The words rang in his ears still,
with a solemnity that even the red-nosed, snuffy, broken-down parson who
hiccuped through the service had not been able to kill. But, God! the
irony of the thing--the ghastly mockery! _To love and to cherish till
death us do part_! Verily, the iron entered into his soul; day and night
the hideous burden crushed him. The castles in the air that, boylike, he
had builded were crumbled into dust. Was _this_ the end of all his
dreams? Well, at least there was that friendly cannon-ball to be prayed
for, or a French cutlass or pike in some boat exped