himself in
his quiet, observant way. Mr. Twemlow, the rector of the parish, had
chanced--as he often chanced on a Saturday, after buckling up a brace
of sermons--to issue his mind (with his body outside it) for a little
relief of neighbourhood. And these little airings of his chastening
love--for he loved everybody, when he had done his sermon--came,
whenever there was a fair chance of it, to a glass of the fine old port
which is the true haven for an ancient Admiral.

"Just in time, Rector," cried Admiral Darling, who had added by many
a hardship to his inborn hospitality. "This is my young friend Blyth
Scudamore, the son of one of my oldest friends. You have heard of Sir
Edmond Scudamore?"

"And seen him and felt him. And to him I owe, under a merciful
Providence, the power of drinking in this fine port the health of his
son, which I do with deep pleasure, for the excellence both of end and
means."

The old man bowed at the praise of his wine, and the young one at that
of his father. Then, after the usual pinch of snuff from the Rector's
long gold box, the host returned to the subject he had been full of
before this interruption.

"The question we have in hand is this. What is to be done with our
friend Blyth? He was getting on famously, till this vile peace came.
Twemlow, you called it that yourself, so that argument about words is
useless. Blyth's lieutenancy was on the books, and the way they carry
things on now, and shoot poor fellows' heads off, he might have been
a post-captain in a twelvemonth. And now there seems nothing on earth
before him better than Holy-Orders."

"Admiral Darling is kind enough to think," said Scudamore, in his mild,
hesitative way, blushing outwardly, but smiling inwardly, "that I am too
good to be a clergyman."

"And so you are, and Heaven knows it, Blyth, unless there was a chance
of getting on by goodness, which there is in the Navy, but not in the
Church. Twemlow, what is your opinion?"

"It would not be modest in me," said the Rector, "to stand up too much
for my own order. We do our duty, and we don't get on."

"Exactly. You could not have put it better. You get no vacancies by shot
and shell, and being fit for another world, you keep out of it. Have you
ever heard me tell the story about Gunner MacCrab, of the Bellerophon?"

"Fifty times, and more than that," replied the sturdy parson, who liked
to make a little cut at the Church sometimes, but would not allow any
other