seated together over a dish of tea when we heard the scrunch of
steps outside our door, and there was the postman with a letter in
his hand.

"I think it is for me," said my mother, and sure enough it was
addressed in the most beautiful writing to Mrs. Mary Stone, of
Friar's Oak, and there was a red seal the size of a half-crown upon
the outside of it with a flying dragon in the middle.

"Whom think you that it is from, Anson?" she asked.

"I had hoped that it was from Lord Nelson," answered my father. "It
is time the boy had his commission. But if it be for you, then it
cannot be from any one of much importance."

"Can it not!" she cried, pretending to be offended. "You will ask
my pardon for that speech, sir, for it is from no less a person than
Sir Charles Tregellis, my own brother."

My mother seemed to speak with a hushed voice when she mentioned
this wonderful brother of hers, and always had done as long as I can
remember, so that I had learned also to have a subdued and reverent
feeling when I heard his name. And indeed it was no wonder, for
that name was never mentioned unless it were in connection with
something brilliant and extraordinary. Once we heard that he was at
Windsor with the King. Often he was at Brighton with the Prince.
Sometimes it was as a sportsman that his reputation reached us, as
when his Meteor beat the Duke of Queensberry's Egham, at Newmarket,
or when he brought Jim Belcher up from Bristol, and sprang him upon
the London fancy. But usually it was as the friend of the great,