"That's Jackson, to a hair. But--but--then you _hev_ seen 'en?" "Seen 'en?" cried Uncle Issy. "A nice miss I ha'n't helped to bury 'en, by this time! Oh yes . . . if you want Jackson he's inside: an' what's more, he's a long way inside. But you can't want him half so much as he'll be wantin' you." HIS EXCELLENCY'S PRIZE-FIGHT. My grand-uncle pushed the decanter of brown sherry: a stout old-fashioned decanter, with shoulders almost as square as his own, and a silver chain about them bearing a silver label--not unlike the badge and collar which he himself wore on full ceremonial occasions. "Three times round the world," he said, "and as yet only twice around the table. You must do it justice, gentlemen." "A great wine, Admiral!" said the Rector, filling and sipping, with half-closed eyes. "They have a brown sherry at Christ Church which may challenge it, perhaps . . . The steward remembers my weakness when I go up to preach my afternoon sermon at St. Mary's. There was talk in Congregation, the other day, of abolishing afternoon sermons, on the ground that nobody attended them; but this, as one speaker feelingly observed, would deprive the country clergy of a dear privilege. . . ." The Rector took another sip. "An heroic contest, between two such wines!" "Talking of heroic contests, mine came to me by means of a prize-fight," said my grand-uncle, with a glance down the table at us two youngsters who were sipping and looking wise, as became connoisseurs fresh from the small beer of a public school. At the word 'prize-fight,' Dick and I pricked up our ears. To us the Admiral was at once a prodigiously fine fellow and a prodigiously old one--though he dated after Nelson's day, to us he reached well back to it, and in fact he had been a midshipman in the last two years of the Great War. Certainly he belonged to the old school rather than to the new. He had fought under Codrington at Navarino. He had talked with mighty men of the ring--Tom Cribb, Jem Mace, Belcher, Sayers. "What is more," said he, "though paid late, the wine you're drinking is the first prize-money I ever took; in my first ship, lads, and within forty-eight hours of joining her. . . . Youth, youth!"--as the decanter came around to him he refilled his glass.--"And to think that I was a good two years younger than either of you!" "A prize-fight? You'll tell us about it, sir?" ventured Dick eagerly. "The Rector has heard the yarn before, I doubt?" said the old man, with a glance which told that he only needed pressing. "That objection," the Rector answered tactfully, "has been lodged against certain of my sermons. I never let it deter me." "There's a moral in it, too," said my grand-uncle, visibly reassured. Well, as for the moral, I cannot say that I have ever found it, to swear by. But here is my grand-uncle's story.