perhaps Stephen Ludlow will lend it to you. I will
ask him, for I am sure that you will like it."

"Perhaps I may have read it, Miss Margery, already," said Charley,
smiling. "If it is the `Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,' I
have."

"Yes, yes! that is the very book!" exclaimed Margery, "how could you
guess so quickly?"

"Because I know of no other book with a man Friday in it, or one so
interesting," said Charley; "but I must tell you one thing. Friday is
always spoken of as a black, but that is a mistake, as the inhabitants
of all the islands in the part of the Pacific where Robinson Crusoe is
supposed to have been wrecked are light brown people; some are very
light. Many of them are civilised, and have become Christians, but in
those days they were perfect savages, and some of them were cannibals."

"How dreadful!" exclaimed Margery. "But have you been out in those
seas?"

"Yes!" answered the midshipman, "I once came home that way, and we
touched at several islands. They are very beautiful, and I should much
like to go out there again."

"So should I," said Margery, and she sighed. She would like to have
told him all about Jack, but he was as yet too great a stranger to her
to allow her to speak to him on a subject which was to her almost
sacred, so she said nothing; she did not even tell him that she had had
a brother Jack, who had gone to sea and been lost.

Charley Blount soon became a great favourite of the inmates of the
Tower, as also with most of the neighbours. His history seemed a sad
one, and yet he was as merry and happy a fellow as ever lived. He had
but few friends on whom he had any claim, and they were in India; the
only one he had had in England, an aunt, was dead. She was the sister
of his father--a maiden lady of true piety, who had indeed instructed
him in the way he should go, and Charley Blount had not departed from
it. This was the reason he was so merry and happy. His happiness was
within himself. Captain Askew delighted in him. He seemed to him what
his own boy would have been, and it was with inward satisfaction he
heard that he had no friends in England to whom he could go.

"Then, Charley, you must make this old Tower your home, as long as you
can keep off the salt water," he answered. "We are grave, old-fashioned
people, but we'll do our best to make your stay with us pleasant."

Charley assured his friends that he knew when he was in good quarters,
and tha