of his guardians,
and who was most eager that every trace of his sea life should be
eradicated.

"Don't let him get spoiled, Layton, because he's a Lord," said the other
guardian, who was an old Admiral. "There's good stuff in the lad, and it
would be a thousand pities it should be corrupted."

Layton did his best to obey each; but the task had its difficulties. As
to the boy himself, the past and the present, the good and the evil,
the frank young middy and the rich lordling, warred and contended in
his nature; nor was it very certain at any moment which would ultimately
gain the mastery. Such, without dwelling more minutely, was he who now
strolled along through shrubbery and parterre, half listless as to the
way, but very happy withal, and very light-hearted.

There was something in the scene that recalled England to his mind.
There were more trees and turf than usually are found in Italian
landscape, and there was, half hidden between hazel and alder, a clear,
bright river, that brawled and fretted over rocks, or deepened into dark
pools, alternately. How the circling eddies of a fast-flowing stream do
appeal to young hearts! what music do they hear in the gushing waters!
what a story is there in that silvery current as it courses along
through waving meadows, or beneath tall mountains, and along some dark
and narrow gorge, emblem of life itself in its light and shade, its
peaceful intervals and its hours of struggle and conflict.

Forcing his way through the brushwood that guarded the banks, the boy
gained a little ledge of rock, against which the current swept with
violence, and then careered onward over a shallow, gravelly bed till
lost in another bend of the stream. Just as Agincourt reached the
rock, he spied a fishing-rod deeply and securely fastened in one of
its fissures, but whose taper point was now bending like a whip, and
springing violently under the struggling effort of a strong fish. He
was nothing of an angler. Of honest "Izaak" and his gentle craft he
absolutely knew nought, and of all the mysteries of hackles and green
drakes he was utterly ignorant; but his sailor instinct could tell him
when a spar was about to break, and this he now saw to be the case. The
strain was great, and every jerk now threatened to snap either line or
rod. He looked hurriedly around him for the fisherman, whose interests
were in such grave peril; but seeing no one near, he endeavored to
withdraw the rod. While he th