charge
myself with any wrong you have committed, letting your confidence stand
to your credit, as well as the service you have done for me--and
another. Do you know the grey marble tablet on the south wall of the
church--the _Nerbuddha_ monument?"

I nodded.

"'_Sacred to the memory of Lieutenant-Colonel Victor Stanhope, C.B., and
105 Officers and Men of Her Majesty's 2-th Regiment of Foot, lost in the
wreck of the Nerbuddha, East Indiaman, on Menawhidden, January 15th,
1857. . . ._' Then follows a list of the officers. Underneath, if you
remember, is a separate slab to the officers and crew of the
_Nerbuddha_, who behaved admirably, all the senior officers keeping
order to the last and going down with the ship."

I nodded again, for I knew the inscriptions pretty well by heart.

"The wreck happened in the first winter of my incumbency here. Then, as
now, I had one pupil living with me, an excellent fellow. Dick Hobart
was his name, his age seventeen or thereabouts, and my business to put
some polish on a neglected education before he entered the Army.
His elder brother had been a college friend of mine, and indeed our
families had been acquainted for years.

"Dick slept in the room you now occupy. He had a habit, which I never
cured, of sitting up late over a pipe and a yellow-backed novel: and so
he happened to be dressed that night when he saw the first signal of
distress go up from Menawhidden. He came to my room at once and called
me up: and while I tumbled out and began to dress, he ran down to Porth
to give the alarm.

"The first signal, however, had been seen by the folks down there, and
he found the whole place in a hubbub. Our first life-boat had arrived
less than three months before; but the crew got her off briskly, and
were pulling away lustily for the reef when it occurred to a few of
those left behind that the sea running was not too formidable for a
couple of seine-boats lying high on the beach: and within five minutes
these were hauled down and manned with scratch crews--Dick Hobart among
them.

"Three days of east wind had knocked up a heavy swell: but the wind was
blowing a moderate gale only--nothing to account for a big ship (as she
was already reported to be) finding herself on Menawhidden.
Three signals only had been shown, and these in quick succession.
We learned afterwards that she went down within twelve minutes of
striking. She had dashed straight on the Carracks, with the w