ded with my prayers to him.
And so it was that he let me go, with pity for my youth and sex, but a
knowledge that I was in good hands, and an inborn, perhaps "Puritanical"
faith, that the Lord of all right would see to me.

The Major, on the other hand, had none of this. He differed from Uncle
Sam as much as a trim-cut and highly cultured garden tree differs from a
great spreading king of the woods. He was not without a strict sense of
religion, especially when he had to march men to church; and he never
even used a bad word, except when wicked facts compelled him. When
properly let alone, and allowed to nurse his own opinions, he had a
respectable idea that all things were certain to be ordered for the
best; but nothing enraged him so much as to tell him that when things
went against him, or even against his predictions.

It was lucky for me, then, that Major Hockin had taken a most adverse
view of my case. He formed his opinions with the greatest haste, and
with the greatest perseverance stuck to them; for he was the most
generous of mankind, if generous means one quite full of his genus. And
in my little case he had made up his mind that the whole of the facts
were against me. "Fact" was his favorite word, and one which he always
used with great effect, for nobody knows very well what it means, as it
does not belong to our language. And so when he said that the facts were
against me, who was there to answer that facts are not truth?

This fast-set conclusion of his was known to me not through himself,
but through his wife. For I could not yet bring myself to speak of the
things that lay close at my heart to him, though I knew that he must be
aware of them. And he, like a gentleman, left me to begin. I could often
see that he was ready and quite eager to give me the benefit of his
opinion, which would only have turned me against him, and irritated him,
perhaps, with me. And having no home in England, or, indeed, I might
say, any where, I was to live with the Major and his wife, supposing
that they could arrange it so, until I should discover relatives.

We had a long and stormy voyage, although we set sail so fairly; and I
thought that we never should round Cape Horn in the teeth of the furious
northeast winds; and after that we lay becalmed, I have no idea in what
latitude, though the passengers now talked quite like seamen, at least
till the sea got up again. However, at last we made the English Channel,
in the d