his mantelpiece, was stuck full of
pins. Some one asked the meaning of this, and was told by Gordon that
they marked and followed the course of his boys on their voyages. The
pins were moved from point to point as the boys sailed onward. "I pray
for each one of them day by day," he said.

Soon Gordon's class grew too big for his room to hold, and he then
began to have a class at the Ragged Schools. The mud-larks of
Gravesend needed no coaxing to go to "The Kernel's" class. Here was a
teacher who did not only try to teach them to be good and manly, and
straight and true, and _gentle_ men, but who, when he taught them
geography, could tell them the most splendid and exciting stories of
countries beyond the seas, where he himself had fought in great
battles. He never _preached_ at them, or looked solemn and shocked,
but made them laugh more than any one else ever did, and had the
merriest twinkle in his kind, keen eyes, that were like the sea, and
looked sometimes blue, sometimes grey.

He found out one day that what his "Kings" most longed to do was to go
up to London to see the Zoo. No sooner did he know it than every plan
was made for the little campaign. He himself could not leave his work,
but he got some one else to take them, saw them safely off with their
dinner in baskets, and welcomed them back in the evening to a great
strawberry feast.

Three or four of the boys who stayed with him got scarlet fever, and
far into the night he would sit with them, telling them stories, and
soothing them until they stopped tossing about and fell asleep.

At first, when he came to Gravesend, he clothed two or three boys in
the year. But it was not long before he gave away, each year, several
hundreds of suits, and had to buy boys' boots by the gross.

All this came out of his pay. Gordon was always well-dressed,
well-groomed, and looked like an officer and a gentleman, but upon
himself he spent next to nothing.

His food was of the plainest, and sometimes of the scantiest. He would
tell, with a twinkle in his eye, what a surprise it was to the boys who
came to stay with him, expecting to be fed with all sorts of dainties,
to find that salt beef, and just what other things were necessary, was
what the Colonel had to eat.

Constantly his purse and pockets were empty, for scarcely ever did any
one come to Gordon for help without getting it, and Gordon had no money
save his pay as a colonel.

Often he had disappo