The old gentleman walked across the room and gazed long and earnestly at the picture of the ships; then he seemed to find something very interesting in the compass-box on the stand; then he locked the cabinet, and lighting a cigar stretched himself back in his easy-chair, and smoked for a while with closed eyes.  I sat thoughtful and silent until he roused himself with a slight effort:  “Draw a chair for your feet, Frank, and take a fresh cigar:  you’ll find them very mild.  Go to sleep if I get prosy when fairly wound off on my yarn.  I am going to begin at the very starting-place.

“Of course you know I am an Englishman, for you were quite old enough, when you first knew us all at Stewart’s hotel on Broad street, to remember now all about it.  The children were then in mourning for their dear mother, but lately dead, and had just come over to make their home with me.  My father was a clergyman, possessed of an independent fortune and holding a comfortable living in a sea-coast town some twenty miles from Liverpool, where I was born four years after my only brother.  There were only the two of us, and my earliest recollections are connected with the dangerous and mischievous pranks which John and I used to play in and upon the waters of the Irish Sea.  I always was fond of John, as I believe he was of me, but he was a domineering fellow, never satisfied unless he had the lead in everything:  very dull at his books, but quite handsome, even when a lad, and having a certain smartness about him which was very taking.  He was the elder son, and the favorite of my father, though my mother never showed any partiality between us.  John never treated me well.  Heaven knows, I have no unkind thoughts of him for it now, poor fellow! but I wish to tell you the whole story exactly as it was.  I was a fair scholar, and generally had my own tasks to do, and John’s also.  I worked out all his hard sums and problems, construed his Virgil while I was only reading Caesar, and often wrote his Greek exercise when I was almost too sleepy to keep my eyes open.  The consequence was that my own lessons were often neglected, and if I got a caning for my failure, I had no sympathy from John, although it was the price I paid for his good mark.”

“It was confoundedly mean of him,” I remarked, knocking the ashes from my cigar.  But Uncle Joseph did not notice the interruption.

“In short, I was John’s fag at school, though not at all a willing one, and the situation was quietly accepted for me at home.  My father was singularly blind to my brother’s faults.  His ambition was to purchase the patronage of his living and have John succeed to it; but we both preferred paddling about in the salt water, and holding a sheet in the fishermen’s smacks with a stiff norther after us, to studying our catechism or making Hebrew letters.  We were both expert and fearless swimmers, with good wind and strong limbs.  In after years I remember well a wager which I lost at Honolulu to