sentence, and that he and our poor culprit, as he said, would come
home by the Portsmouth coach in the evening.

One room was already in order when Sir John Griffith kindly came to
see whether he could bring any comfort to a spirit which would
infinitely have preferred death to dishonour, and was, above all,
shocked at the lack of physical courage. Never had I liked our old
Admiral so well as when I heard how his chief anger was directed
against the general mismanagement, and the cruelty of blighting a
poor lad's life when not yet seventeen. His father might have been
warned to remove him without the public scandal of a court-martial
and dismissal.

'The guilt and shame would have been all the same to us,' said my
mother.

'Come, Mary, don't be hard on the poor fellow. In quiet times like
these a poor boy can't look over the wall where one might have
stolen a horse, ay, or a dozen horses, when there was something else
to think about!'

'You would not have forgiven such a thing, sir.'

'It never would have happened under me, or in any decently commanded
ship!' he thundered. 'There wasn't a fault to be found with him in
the Calypso. What possessed Winslow to let him sail with Brydone?
But the service is going,' etc. etc., he ran on--forgetting that it
was he himself who had been unwilling, perhaps rightly, to press the
Duke of Clarence for an appointment to a crack frigate for his
namesake. However, when he took leave he repeated, as he kissed my