o the father who had been snatched from him by a sudden and
untimely death, especially when he saw the boys of his school who were
fortunate enough to possess both parents; but often as his thoughts went
to his father, he rarely spoke of him to his mother. He could see that
the pain and sorrow of his death were still with her--that the awful
moment when the news came of that sudden, swift catastrophe had written
itself upon her heart and memory in writing which would never be
effaced.

Paul did not find out all that he had become to his mother till some
time after his father's death--not, in fact, till his first term at
school had ended. He had never been away from home so long before, and
he never forgot how she pressed him to her, and with what tender
earnestness she said, "Ah, dear, you do not know how I have missed you."

That same night, when she had thought him fast asleep, she entered his
room, looked long and earnestly in his face by the light of a candle,
and then stole gently out. And that Sunday, when he went to the old
church with her, he felt her hand steal into his as the vicar read the
Litany; and the pressure of her hand waxed closer as the vicar's voice
sounded through the church: "From lightning and tempest; from plague,
pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death."
Then rose the fervent response from the congregation, "Good Lord,
deliver us." And none prayed it more fervently than the widow as she
knelt by the side of her son.

It was not only that Mrs. Percival had lost her husband at sea, but she
had lost a brother, a promising young lieutenant in the Navy, while on
active service in China; and Paul's grandfather had lost his life many
years back while fighting under Nelson at Copenhagen. It is little to be
wondered at, therefore, that Mrs. Percival rarely spoke about the sea to
Paul. She feared its fascination; she was anxious to keep his thoughts
from it. He was all that was now left to her, and she had no wish that
he should go into the service in which the lives of three near and dear
relatives had been sacrificed.

"Yes, your father sometimes spoke of it," Mrs. Percival answered. "His
father--that is to say, your grandfather--lived in the time when there
was such a great scare about wicked Napoleon invading England; but that
is long ago, and it was all ended by Nelson's last great victory at
Trafalgar. Ah, Paul, these scares and wars are terrible. I sometimes
think