“I thought I should not lose a minute in coming to you with it,” he said. “You are so close to the bowling-green here, it should have additional interest in your eyes. The story is that Nelson was playing bowls when some one rushed in to say that the Spanish Armada was in sight. But the news did not put him off his game. 'We'll have plenty of time to finish our game and beat the Spaniards afterwards,' he cried; and sure enough he went on with the game to the end. There was a man for you!” “And who won?” asked Dorothy innocently. “That's just the question I put to my friend,” he cried. “The story is plainly unfinished. He did not say whether Nelson and his partner won his game against the other players; but you may be sure that he did.” “He didn't say who was Nelson's partner?” said Dorothy. “No, I have told you all that he told me,” he replied. “I shouldn't be surprised to hear that his partner was a man named Drake,” said I. “A senior partner too in that transaction and others. But the story is a capital one and show's the Englishman as he is to-day. Why, it was only the year before the war that there was a verse going about,-- 'I was playing golf one day When the Germans landed; All our men had run away, All our ships were stranded. And the thought of England's shame Almost put me off my game.'” Our antiquarian friend looked puzzled for some time; then he shook his head gravely, saying:-- “I don't like that. It's a gross libel upon our brave men--and on our noble sailors too: I heard some one say in a speech the other day that there are no better seamen in the world than are in the British Navy. Our soldiers did not run away, and all our ships were not stranded. It was one of the German lies to say so. And what I say is that it was very lucky for the man who wrote that verse that there was a British fleet to prevent the Germans landing. They never did succeed in landing, I'm sure, though I was talking to a man who had it on good authority that there were five U-boats beginning to disembark some crack regiments of Hun cavalry when a British man-o'-war--one, mind you--a single ship--came 'n sight, and they all bundled back to their blessed U-boats hi double quick time.” “I think you told me about that before,” said I--and he had. “It was the same person who brought the first news of the Russian troops going through England--he had seen them on the platform of Crewe stamping off the snow they had brought on their boots from Archangel; and afterwards he had been talking with a soldier who had seen the angels at Mons, and had been ordered home to be one of the shooting party at the Tower of London, when Prince Louis was court-martialled and sentenced.”