the lady, and naturally followed the career of her brother, who earned a noble reputation.  Later I corresponded with him, and received from him his portrait and books.  Referring to Sir George Grey in my talk with Mr. William Grey, I found that he knew him well and not long before, in a voyage of which he had made many into many seas, had visited New Zealand, and been a guest of Sir George Grey at his island-home in the harbour of Auckland.  Was he related to Sir George? was my natural query.  Again there was reticence.  The name was the same, but the Greys were numerous.

The journey wore on.  The resource of the steamer’s company was to sit on the upper deck, watch the swollen river with its waifs of uprooted trees and the banks green with the summer, chatting ourselves into intimacy.  The young blindman made good and very good, and his guardian, while keeping a lookout on his charge from under his well-worn traveller’s cap, which I now knew had sheltered its owner in tropic hurricanes and icy Arctic blasts, discussed with me matters various and widely related.  Nearing our journey’s end, we sat in the moonlight, the Mississippi opening placidly before us between hazy hills.  We had grown to be chums, and next morning we were to part.  It was a time for confidences.  “Well,” said Mr. Grey, “I am going to get a good look at America, then I mean to return home and go into Parliament.”  I suggested there might be difficulties about that.  English elections were uncertain, and how could he be at all sure that any constituency would want him.  “Ah,” said he, this time no longer reticent.  “I am going into the House of Lords.”  “Indeed,” said I in surprise, “and who are you really, Mr. William Grey?” At last he was outspoken.  He was heir to the earldom of Stamford, his uncle the present earl, a man past eighty, childless, and in infirm health, must soon lay down the title.  He was preparing himself for the responsibilities of the high position and believed it well to make a study of America.  His father, a younger son, had been a clergyman in Canada, and he, though with an Oxford training, knew the world outside of England better than the old home.  His direct ancestor was Lord Grey of Groby, whose father, an earl of Stamford, had been a Parliamentary commander in the years of the Civil War, and in the century before that, a flower of the house had been the Lady Jane Grey, who had perished in her youth on the scaffold, a possible heir to the English crown.  So this outre personage, good-heartedly helping the blindman to an outing, and in a shy apologetic way getting into touch with an environment strange to him, was a high-born nobleman fitting himself for his dignities.