f that name on board?" inquired Sir Harry. "Let him
be called aft."

A stout lad soon made his appearance, and was immediately pressed in the
old people's arms. This son was a truant, long absent from his home.
At length, grown weary at delay, quitting their abode near Edinburgh,
they had travelled south, inquiring at every port for their lost son,
and only that morning had they arrived by waggon at Poole, believing
that it was a port where men-of-war were to be found. A boatman, for
the sake of a freight, had persuaded them to come off with him, pointing
out the ship which was then coming out through the Needles.

Sir Harry was so pleased with the perseverance and affection which the
old couple had exhibited, that he took them on to Weymouth, when the
story was told to the King. His Majesty had them presented to him, and
he and Queen Charlotte paid them all sorts of attention, and at length,
after they had spent some weeks with their son, dismissed them, highly
gratified, to their home in the North.

Queen Charlotte was as good a woman as ever lived, and, in her way, was
as kind and affable as was the King. She had a quaint humour about her,
too, which frequently exhibited itself, in spite of the somewhat painful
formality of the usual court circle. As an example--Sir Harry had had a
present of bottled green peas made to him the previous year, and,
looking on them as a great rarity, he had kept them to be placed on the
table before his royal guests. As he knew more about ploughing the
ocean than ploughing the land, and affairs nautical than horticultural,
it did not occur to him that fresh green peas were to obtained on shore.
The bottled green peas were therefore proudly produced on the first
opportunity.

"Your Majesty," said Sir Harry, as the Queen was served, "those green
peas have been kept a whole year."

The Queen made no reply till she had eaten a few, and sent several
flying off from the prongs of her fork. Then, nodding with a smile, she
quietly said, "So I did tink."

To the end of his days, Sir Harry used to laugh over the story, adding,
"Sure enough, they were very green; but as hard as swan-shot."

But I undertook to narrate a circumstance which exhibited Sir Harry
Burrard Neale's character in its true colours. I need not enter into an
account of that painful event, the Mutiny of the British Fleet. It
broke out first at Spithead, on the 15th April, 1797, on board Lord
Bridport's flag-shi