bought him a pine box, to say nothing of
rosewood. He never gave up expecting a war with Great Britain. Hopeful
and radiant to the last, his dying words were, England--war--few
days--great profits!

It was that sweet old lady, Dame Jocelyn, who told me the story of Silas
Trefethen; for these things happened long before my day. Silas died in
1817.

At Trefethen's death his unique collection came under the auctioneer's
hammer. Some of the larger guns were sold to the town, and planted at
the corners of divers streets; others went off to the iron-foundry; the
balance, numbering twelve, were dumped down on a deserted wharf at the
foot of Anchor Lane, where, summer after summer, they rested at their
ease in the grass and fungi, pelted in autumn by the rain and annually
buried by the winter snow. It is with these twelve guns that our story
has to deal.

The wharf where they reposed was shut off from the street by a high
fence--a silent dreamy old wharf, covered with strange weeds and mosses.
On account of its seclusion and the good fishing it afforded, it was
much frequented by us boys.

There we met many an afternoon to throw out our lines, or play
leap-frog among the rusty cannon. They were famous fellows in our eyes.
What a racket they had made in the heyday of their unchastened youth!
What stories they might tell now, if their puffy metallic lips could
only speak! Once they were lively talkers enough; but there the grim
sea-dogs lay, silent and forlorn in spite of all their former growlings.

They always seemed to me like a lot of venerable disabled tars,
stretched out on a lawn in front of a hospital, gazing seaward, and
mutely lamenting their lost youth.

But once more they were destined to lift up their dolorous voices--once
more ere they keeled over and lay speechless for all time. And this is
how it befell.

Jack Harris, Charley Marden, Harry Blake, and myself were fishing
off the wharf one afternoon, when a thought flashed upon me like an
inspiration.

"I say, boys!" I cried, hauling in my line hand over hand, "I've got
something!"

"What does it pull like, youngster?" asked Harris, looking down at the
taut line and expecting to see a big perch at least.

"O, nothing in the fish way," I returned, laughing; "it's about the old
guns."

"What about them?"

"I was thinking what jolly fun it would be to set one of the old sogers
on his legs and serve him out a ration of gunpowder."

Up came the three