le boy who used to be in the room next his in that
house in Corfu, but we know little of Charles Gordon until he was ten
years old. His father was then given an important post at Woolwich,
and he and his family returned to England.

Then began merry days for little Charlie.

In long after years he wrote to one of his nieces about the great
building at Woolwich where firearms for the British army are made and
stored: "You never, any of you, made a proper use of the Arsenal
workmen, as we did. They used to neglect their work for our orders,
and turned out some splendid squirts--articles that would wet you
through in a minute. As for the cross-bows they made, they were grand
with screws."

There were five boys and six girls in the Gordon family. Charlie was
the fourth son, and two of his elder brothers were soldiers while he
was still quite a little lad.

It was in his holidays that the Arsenal was his playground, for on the
return from Corfu he was sent to school at Taunton, where you may still
see his initials, "C.G.G.", carved deep on the desk he used.

At school he did not seem to be specially clever. He was not fond of
lessons, but he drew very well, and made first-rate maps. He was
always brimful of high spirits and mischief, and ready for any sort of
sport, and the people of Woolwich must have sighed when Charlie came
home for his holidays.

One time when he came he found that his father's house was overrun with
mice. This was too good a chance to miss. He and one of his brothers
caught all the mice they could, carried them to the house of the
commandant of the garrison, which was opposite to theirs, gently opened
the door, and let the mice loose in their new home.

Once, with the screw-firing cross-bows that the workmen at the Arsenal
had made for them, the wild Gordon boys broke twenty-seven panes of
glass in one of the large warehouses of the Arsenal. A captain who was
in the room narrowly escaped being shot, one of the screws passing
close to his head and fixing itself into the wall as if it had been
placed there by a screwdriver.

Freddy, the youngest of the five boys, had an anxious, if merry, time
when his big brothers came back from school. With them he would ring
the doorbells of houses till the angry servants of Woolwich seemed for
ever to be opening doors to invisible ringers. Often, too, little
Freddy would be pushed into a house, the bell rung by his mischievous
brothers, and the do