In the quiet cabin they looked into each other's eyes, these two old friends.

It was ten years since they had met.

The one was now the world's hero, the other a retired Captain of the
Line.

Nelson was thinking as his eyes dwelt upon his friend,

"Just the same."

The Parson,

"What a change!"

It was the old Nelson he saw, and yet only the wraith of the old Nelson. There was a grey and ghastly darkness about him that made the Parson afraid. It was the grey of snow at dusk, the darkness of a pool which was haunted.

The Parson knew the tale, as all Europe knew it. Once he had doubted: now he could doubt no longer. Nelson's story was graven on his face—the story of the man who has betrayed himself. It was writ large there—the struggle, the surrender, the quenching of his ideal in the cataract of passion. He had run away from his best self, as many a man has run. He had slammed a door behind him, hoping to shut out his soul. And now the door had burst open. The ghost of himself, his old self, that had haunted him so long, rapping at the door, refusing in God's name to be laid, had rushed in upon him with a shriek.

He was wrestling with it now.

No wonder he was changed.

The Parson, almost in tears, recalled the Nelson with whom he had chewed ships' biscuits and exchanged dreams in the trenches at Calvi—the Nelson of Corsican days with a face like the morning and a school-boy's heart, his eyes forward into the future. Now he had realised his dreams and more. The young post-captain had become Lord Nelson, Duke of BrontÉ: St. Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen behind him.

And, and, and….

Suddenly, as though divining the thoughts of his old friend, Nelson fell forward.

"O Joy!" he cried, "I have sinned."

He clutched the Parson's shoulder, hugging it.

"Ten minutes since I saw it all." He lifted a dreadful eye. "It was BLAZED upon me in a flash of lightning." His voice had the hollow muffled sound of a man in a nightmare. "I saw myself: not the man the world is looking to, but plain Horatio Nelson—the sinner."

The confession, shuddering forth from the lips of the great seaman, sprang the horror in the other's heart.

"There, there!" he croaked. "There, there, Nelson!"

"Honours, Orders, Westminster Abbey, and the world's cheers are nothing," came the nightmare voice. "That remains."

The Parson collected himself and cleared his throat.

"We all make mistakes, Nelson," he said gruffly. "Everybody stumbles, but no man need lie in the mud."

"I must," cried the other hoarsely. "I must—in honour. Honour!" he cried, throwing back his head with terrible laughter. "Nelson's honour!—O, Joy, you knew me as I was: you see me as I am. You can judge. Is it not hideous that it should come to this?—that men should snigger when Nelson and honour are coupled together."

The tears rolled down the Parson's face.

"Ah, my dear fellow," he kept on saying, patting the other's back, "my dear, dear fellow."

"I have been hiding from my God all these years—and to-day He found me!" sobbed the voice upon his shoulder. "O, He is just—terribly just. He knows no mercy—none."

"None here" murmured the Parson. "There there's plenty for all."

Nelson lifted a blurred face.

"You think that?"

"I'm sure of it," sturdily. "And I know all about that sort of thing now, you know. I'm a parson."

Nelson held the other off.

"Are you a parson?"

"Yes, sir," a thought defiantly. "And why not?"

His heat brought no twinkle to the other's one wet eye.

The nightmare was passing: Nelson was drifting away into dreams.

"My father's a parson," he mused, as one talking to himself. "If I hadn't gone to sea at twelve, I think I should have been. Nelson and religion!—it sounds strange. Yet I always wished to give all to God."

"You have," cried the Parson fiercely. "Who dares say you've not?"

"I do," said Nelson, dreaming.

"And what would have come to God's world but for you?" shouted the
Parson. "Why, swamped by a pack of rackety French atheists."

Nelson seemed not to hear.

"What is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world, and lose himself?" he whispered.

The Parson gathered the other in his arms.

"Nelson," he said with tender sternness, "if you've wronged the Almighty, you must make Him amends."

"How, Harry?" came the voice from his shoulder.

"Why," said the Parson with a grave smile, "you must arise and smite His enemies."

Slowly Nelson composed himself. A great calm swept over him.

"You're right," he said at last, the light breaking about his face. "I am England's David. It is for me to slay Goliath. Sinner as I am, He has chosen me to do this work for Him, and I will do it. Yes, I will do it."

He turned to the port and gazed out.

To the Parson it seemed an hour before he turned again.

The nightmare madness had passed. His face was altogether changed. It was that of a child who wakes from sleep in a panic. There was a startled little smile about it.

"Harry," he said in shy waking voice, "have I been dreaming?—or have I been talking a lot of nonsense?"

The Parson, for all his simplicity, was something of a man of the world.

"Why," he cried heartily, "you've been standing with your back to me, mumbling and grumbling, and being damned rude."

Nelson laughed.

Was the Parson wrong?—or was there in that laugh a note of almost hysterical relief?

"I'll make it up to you, Harry. I'll make it up to you, my boy." He thrust his hand into his bosom, and produced a miniature. "Look here!" in reverent voice—"my Guardian Angel."