hild," said his grandmother, "that hunger and fear did not
drive you home."

"Fear! grand-mamma," exclaimed the boy; "I never saw fear. What is it?"

Horatio was a born leader, who never even in childhood shrank from a
hazardous undertaking. This story of his school days shows how the
spirit of leadership marked him before he had entered his teens.

In the garden attached to the boarding school at North Walsham, which
he and his elder brother, William, attended, there grew a remarkably
fine pear tree. The sight of this tree, loaded with fruit was,
naturally, a very tempting one to the boys. The boldest among the older
ones, however, dared not risk the consequences of helping themselves to
the pears, which they knew were highly prized by the master of the
school.

Horatio, who thought neither of the sin of stealing the schoolmaster's
property, nor of the risk involved in the attempt, volunteered to
secure the coveted pears.

He was let down in sheets from the bedroom window by his schoolmates,
and, after gathering as much of the fruit as he could carry, returned
with considerable difficulty. He then turned the pears over to the
boys, not keeping one for himself.

"I only took them," he explained, "because the rest of you were afraid
to venture."

The sense of honor of the future "Hero of the Nile" and of Trafalgar
was as keen in boyhood as in later life.

One year, at the close of the Christmas holidays, he and his brother
William set out on horseback to return to school. There had been a
heavy fall of snow which made traveling very disagreeable, and William
persuaded Horatio to go back home with him, saying that it was not safe
to go on.

"If that be the case," said Rev. Mr. Nelson, the father of the boys,
when the matter was explained to him, "you certainly shall not go; but
make another attempt, and I will leave it to your honor. If the road is
dangerous, you may return; but remember, boys, I leave it to your
honor."

The snow was really deep enough to be made an excuse for not going on,
and William was for returning home a second time. Horatio, however,
would not be persuaded again. "We must go on," he said; "remember,
brother, it was left to our honor."

When only twelve years old, young Nelson's ambition urged him to try
his fortune at sea. His uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling, commanded the
Raisonnable, a ship of sixty-four guns, and the boy thought it would be
good fortune, indeed, if he could get a