him, so its preparation was a sort of blend of revelry and

religious ceremony. After the main corpus of the thing had been
carefully selected and safely bestowed--the pots of jam, the

cake, the sausages, and the apples that filled up corners so
nicely--after the last package had been wedged in, the girls had

deposited their own private and personal offerings on the top. I
forget their precise nature; anyhow, they were nothing of any

particular practical use to a boy. But they had involved some
contrivance and labour, some skimping of pocket money, and much

delightful cloud-building as to the effect on their enraptured
recipient. Well, yesterday there had come a terse

acknowledgment from Edward, heartily commending the cakes and the
jam, stamping the sausages with the seal of Smith major's

approval, and finally hinting that, fortified as he now was,
nothing more was necessary but a remittance of five shillings in

postage stamps to enable him to face the world armed against
every buffet of fate. That was all. Never a word or a hint of

the personal tributes or of his appreciation of them. To us--to
Harold and me, that is--the letter seemed natural and sensible

enough. After all, provender was the main thing, and five
shillings stood for a complete equipment against the most

unexpected turns of luck. The presents were very well in their
way--very nice, and so on--but life was a serious matter, and the

contest called for cakes and half crowns to carry it on, not gew-
gaws and knitted mittens and the like. The girls, however,

in their obstinate way, persisted in taking their own view of the
slight. Hence it was that I received my second rebuff of the

morning.
Somewhat disheartened, I made my way downstairs and out into the

sunlight, where I found Harold playing conspirators by himself on
the gravel. He had dug a small hole in the walk and had laid an

imaginary train of powder thereto; and, as he sought refuge in
the laurels from the inevitableexplosion, I heard him murmur:

"`My God!' said the Czar, `my plans are frustrated!'" It seemed
an excellent occasion for being a black puma. Harold liked black

pumas, on the whole, as well as any animal we were familiar with.
So I launched myself on him, with the appropriate howl, rolling

him over on the gravel.
Life may be said to be composed of things that come off and

things that don't come off. This thing, unfortunately, was one
of the things that didn't come off. From beneath me I heard a

shrill cry of, "Oh, it's my sore knee!" And Harold wriggled
himself free from the puma's clutches, bellowing dismally. Now,

I honestly didn't know he had a sore knee, and, what's more, he
knew I didn't know he had a sore knee. According to boy ethics,

therefore, his attitude was wrong, sore knee or not, and no
apology was due from me. I made half-way advances, however,

suggesting we should lie in ambush by the edge of the pond and
cut off the ducks as they waddled down in simple, unsuspecting

single file; then hunt them as bisons flying scattered over the
vast prairie. A fascinatingpursuit this, and strictly illicit.

But Harold would none of my overtures, and retreated to the house
wailing with full lungs.

Things were getting simply infernal. I struck out blindly for
the open country; and even as I made for the gate a shrill voice

from a window bade me keep off the flower-beds. When the gate
had swung to behind me with a vicious click I felt better, and

after ten minutes along the road it began to grow on me that some
radical change was needed, that I was in a blind alley, and that

this intolerable state of things must somehow cease. All that I
could do I had already done. As well-meaning a fellow as ever

stepped was pounding along the road that day, with an exceeding
sore heart; one who only wished to live and let live, in touch

with his fellows, and appreciating what joys life had to offer.
What was wanted now was a complete change of environment. Some

where in the world, I felt sure, justice and sympathy still
resided. There were places called pampas, for instance, that

sounded well. League upon league of grass, with just an
occasional wild horse, and not a relation within the horizon! To

a bruised spirit this seemed a sane and a healing sort of
existence. There were other pleasant corners, again, where you

dived for pearls and stabbed sharks in the stomach with your big
knife. No relations would be likely to come interfering with you

when thus blissfully occupied. And yet I did not wish--just
yet--to have done with relations entirely. They should be made

to feel their position first, to see themselves as they really
were, and to wish--when it was too late--that they had behaved

more properly.
Of all professions, the army seemed to lend itself the most

thoroughly to the scheme. You enlisted, you followed the drum,
you marched, fought, and ported arms, under strange skies,

through unrecorded years. At last, at long last,
your opportunity would come, when the horrors of war were

flickering through the quiet country-side where you were cradled
and bred, but where the memory of you had long been dim. Folk

would run together, clamorous, palsied with fear; and among the
terror-stricken groups would figure certain aunts. "What hope is

left us?" they would ask themselves, "save in the clemency of the
General, the mysterious, invincible General, of whom men tell

such romantic tales?" And the army would march in, and the guns
would rattle and leap along the village street, and, last of all,

you--you, the General, the fabled hero--you would enter, on your
coal-black charger, your pale set face seamed by an interesting

sabre-cut. And then--but every boy has rehearsed this familiar
piece a score of times. You are magnanimous, in fine--that goes

without saying; you have a coal-black horse, and a sabre-cut,
and you can afford to be very magnanimous. But all the same

you give them a good talking-to.
This pleasant conceit simply ravished my soul for some twenty

minutes, and then the old sense of injury began to well up
afresh, and to call for new plasters and soothing syrups. This

time I took refuge in happy thoughts of the sea. The sea was my
real sphere, after all. On the sea, in especial, you could

combine distinction with lawlessness, whereas the army seemed to
be always weighted by a certain plodding submission to

discipline. To be sure, by all accounts, the life was at first a
rough one. But just then I wanted to suffer keenly; I wanted to

be a poor devil of a cabin boy, kicked, beaten, and sworn at--for
a time. Perhaps some hint, some inkling of my sufferings might

reach their ears. In due course the sloop or felucca would turn
up--it always did--the rakish-looking craft, black of hull,

low in the water, and bristling with guns; the jolly Roger
flapping overhead, and myself for sole commander. By and by, as

usually happened, an East Indiaman would come sailing along full
of relations--not a necessary relation would be missing. And the

crew should walk the plank, and the captain should dance from his
own yardarm, and then I would take the passengers in hand--that

miserable group of well-known figures cowering on the quarter-
deck!--and then--and then the same old performance: the air thick

with magnanimity. In all the repertory of heroes, none is more
truly magnanimous than your pirate chief.

When at last I brought myself back from the future to the actual
present, I found that these delectable visions had helped me over

a longer stretch of road than I had imagined; and I looked
around and took my bearings. To the right of me was a long low

building of grey stone, new, and yet not smugly so; new, and yet
possessing distinction, marked with a character that did not

depend on lichen or on crumbling semi-effacement of moulding and
mullion. Strangers might have been puzzled to classify it; to

me, an explorer from earliest years, the place was familiar
enough. Most folk called it "The Settlement"; others, with quite

sufficient conciseness for our neighbourhood, spoke of "them
there fellows up by Halliday's"; others again, with a hint of