"I once asked Nelson who was the bravest man he'd ever met. He answered like a flash, 'My captain of the foretop aboard the _Agamemnon_--Ralph Piper. The bravest man,' said Nelson, 'because the best. He's my hero!' And I remember the voice in which he said it now." Kit had risen to his feet. All his life Nelson had been his hero; and now he was within touch of his hero's hero. "Where is he?" with glowing eyes. "Out there--under the sycamores." Kit recalled the voice humming the hymn that had welcomed him. CHAPTER XXXVII THE SAINT They passed out of the cottage. A heavy-browed jasmine, the flowers fading now, hung about the door. The greensward ran smoothly away to a shingle bank that rose, long- backed and brown, some three hundred yards away. The bank crossed the horizon like a low breast-work, sweeping away eastward in long roan curve. On the right it ran into a little blunt hill, green-brown and bare. Beyond the bank the sea leapt to the eye. The Parson was walking reverently. There was about him something of the subdued air of the schoolboy going to interview a respected master. "Step quietly," he murmured. "We are going into the presence of a saint." In front of the cottage, about two hundred yards from it, a little knoll, shaded with sycamores, humped up out of the greensward. At the foot of it, in the shadow of a tree, a tall old man was sitting bolt upright in a wooden chair with wheels. A brown book had fallen open beside him; and a musket, propped against the chair, threw a black shadow across the page. "Loaded!" muttered the Parson, pointing. "He can draw a cork from a bottle at a hundred yards." "More than most saints could," whispered the boy. "He's a common-sense saint, not the ordinary run," replied the Parson with a grin. The old man's back was towards them. He was gazing intently through a long glass at the privateer. Kit could see nothing but a straight back and moon-silvered head. "Piper, I've brought a young gentleman of your Service to see you," said the Parson in the quiet tone in which a man addresses a woman or a superior. The old sailor dropped the glass. His great hands fumbled with the wheels of his chair, and he slewed himself about. Kit's heart gave a jerk. The old man ended abruptly at the thighs! Irresistibly the boy recalled a doll of Gwen's whose china legs he had once plucked off in passion, leaving saw-dust stumps. The Parson saw the look on the boy's face. "Ah, I should have told you. Lost both legs in the action with the _Ca Ira_, wasn't it, Piper?" The doll spoke. "Not lost, sir--gone before." Kit glanced at him sharply. Was he joking?