h the
snuff in his waistcoat pocket, "I'll see to the matter without fail.
Good-bye, now, Vernon, good-bye, young shaver, I hope you'll make as
good a sailor and smart an officer as your father before you!"

With these parting words and a kindly nod to me the old Admiral toddled
off across Waterloo Place to the Senior United Service Club opposite, to
which, I presume, he intended transferring his patronage now that the
Reform had given him the cold shoulder, while Dad and I returned to our
temporary lodgings in Piccadilly to tell mother of our unexpected
meeting and its happy result. I may here add that I was never fortunate
enough to see the gallant old veteran again, though I heard of him often
afterwards from my father, who told me he always asked how I was getting
on. Circumstances prevented my meeting him when I was yet in England,
and I was out in China when he died, some four years subsequently to my
making his acquaintance in Pall Mall that morning.

Strange to say, however, the other day, when engaged planning out this
very yarn of my adventures afloat, I chanced to see an advertisement in
one of the Portsmouth papers of an auction about to be held at
Merchiston Hall, near Horndean, where I was informed the Admiral had
resided for many years, and where he spent most of his time farming when
not at sea, before he got mixed up in politics and Parliamentary
matters, as he was in his later days after he was "put on the shelf,"
and hauled down his flag for ay!

Here, the very bed was pointed out to me in which the gallant old sailor
died; a plain, old-fashioned piece of furniture, without any gilding or
meretricious adornment, and honest and substantial like himself.

The house, too, was similarly unpretentious, being a low, one-storied,
verandah--fronted structure, with plenty of room about it, but little
"style" or ornament. It was, though, picturesquely situated in the
centre of a well-timbered little park and homestead and snugly sheltered
by tall fir trees and a thick shrubbery from all north'ard and easterly
winds, amid the prettiest scenery of Hampshire--wooded heights and
pleasant dales, with coppice and hedgerow, and here and there a
red-roofed old farmhouse peeping out from the greenery forming its
immediate surroundings.

"Poor old Charley Napier!" as he was affectionately entitled by those
who served under his flag--officers and men alike, the latter especially
almost idolising him for he was eve