"It was his custom to appropriate a room in the house to the conservation of those things he loved--choice wines, foreign preserves, cordials. This sanctum was a room on the ground floor, under a skylight. Our next-door neighbours' pastime happened to be a game of balls, when one of them lodged on the leaded roof of this consecrated room. Two of my sisters, of the ages of fourteen and sixteen, ran from the drawing-room back window to seek for the ball, and slipping on the leads, the younger fell through the skylight on to the bottles and jars upon the table below. She was dreadfully bruised, and her hands, legs and face were cut, so much so, that she still retains the scars. Her sister gave the alarm. My mother was called; she went to the door of the store-room; her child screamed out, for God's sake to open the door; she was bleeding to death. My mother dared not break the lock, as my father had prohibited any one from entering this, his blue chamber; and what was worse, he had the key. Other keys were tried, but none could open the door. Had I been there, my foot should have picked the lock. Will it be believed that, in that state, my sister was compelled to await my father's return from the House of Commons, of which he was a member? At last, when he returned, my mother informed him of the accident, and tried to allay the wrath which she saw gathering on his brow. He took no notice of her, but paced forward to the closet, when the delinquent, awed by his dreadful voice, hushed her sobs. He opened the door and found her there, scarcely able to stand, trembling and weeping. Without speaking a word, he kicked and cuffed her out of the room, and then gloomily decanted what wine remained in the broken bottles." [Illustration: EDWARD JOHN TRELAWNY _From a drawing by D. Lucas_] The mother of Edward John was Maria, sister of Sir Christopher Hawkins, of Trewithen. That a high-spirited, self-willed, passionate boy like Edward John should get on with such a father was antecedently improbable; and he was sent to sea at the age of twelve in the _Superb_, and had the ill fortune to miss the battle of Trafalgar, through Admiral Duckworth delaying three days at Plymouth to victual his ships with mutton and potatoes.