eak up soon, and had summoned from their home in London the
widow and child of his favourite son, "that Rupert, the best of the
lot," as he used to call him. And now the Colonel was dead. So his
grandson, the last of the Rupert Rays, could look forward to all the
jolly thrills of steaming across the Channel to Folkestone and
bowling in a train to London. Really life was an excellent thing.

The day of the venturesome voyage began with excited sleeplessness
and glowing health, and ended with a headache and great tiredness.
There was the bustle of embarkation on to the boat; the rattle and
bang of falling luggage; the jangle of French and English tongues;
the unstraining of mighty ropes; the "hoot! hoot!" from the funnel,
a side-splitting incident; the _suff-suff-lap-suff_ of the
ploughed-up sea; the spray of the Channel, which sprinkling one's
cheeks, caused one to roar with laughter, till more moderation was
enjoined; the incessant throb of the engines; the vision of white
cliffs, and the excitement among the passengers; the headache; the
landing on a black old pier; the privilege of guarding the luggage
by sitting upon as much of one trunk as six years' growth of boy
will cover, and pressing firmly upon two other trunks with either
hand, while Mrs. Ray (that capable lady) changed francs into
shillings; there was the wearisome and rolling train-journey,
wherein one slept, first against the window and then against the
black sleeve of an unknown gentleman; and lastly there was the
realisation that pale and sunny France had withdrawn into the past
to make room for pale and smutty London.

Now the Captain of all these manoeuvres, as the meanest
intelligence will have observed, was Mrs. Ray. Mrs. Ray was Rupert's
mother, and as beautiful as every mother must be, who has an only
son, and is a widow. Moreover she was a perfect teller of stories:
all really beautiful mothers are. And, for years after, she used at
evening time to draw young Rupert against her knees, and tell him
the traditional stories of that old half-pay officer at Boulogne.
And grandfather was indeed a hero in these stories. We suspect--but
who can sound the artful depths of a woman who is at once young,
lovely, a mother, and a widow?--that Mrs. Ray, knowing that Rupert
could never recall his father, was determined that at least one
soldierly figure should loom heroic in his childish memories. She
would tell again and again how he asked repeatedly, as he la