splintered hip-bone--while fighting his ship against a French
privateer off Guadeloupe, and it had retired him from the service of
my lords the Postmaster-General upon a very small pension, and with a
sword of honour subscribed for by the merchants of the City of
London, whose mails he had gallantly saved. These resources being
barely sufficient to maintain him, still less to permit his helping a
widowed sister whom he had partly maintained during his days of
service, he eked them out by school mastering; and a dreadful trade
he must have found it. In person he was slight and wiry, of a clear,
ruddy complexion, with grey hair, and a grave simplicity of manner.
He wore a tightly buttoned, blue uniform coat, threadbare and frayed,
but scrupulously brushed, noticeably clean linen, and white duck
trousers in all weathers. He walked with the support of a malacca
cane, dragging his wounded leg after him; and had a trick of talking
to himself as he went.

I need scarcely say that we mimicked him; but in school he kept far
better discipline than Stimcoe, for, with all his oddity, we knew him
to be a brave man. Such mathematics as we needed he taught capably
enough and very patiently. The "navigation," so far as we were
concerned, was a mere flourish of the prospectus; and his
qualifications as a teacher of English began and ended with an
enthusiasm for Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas."

Such was Captain Branscome: and, such as he was, he kept the school
running on days when Stimcoe was merely drunk and incapable. He ever
treated Mrs. Stimcoe with the finest courtesy, and, alone among her
creditors, was rewarded with that lady's respect.

I knew, to be sure--we all knew--that she must be in arrears with