have saved us all.'"

   Here is Ned at Runningmede when King John with his pen
in hand was about to sign the Magna Carta.

   "For a moment the King paused irresolute, the uplifted
quill in his hand, while his crafty, furtive eyes indicated
that he might yet break his plighted faith with the
assembled barons.

   "Ned laid his mailed hand upon the parchment.

   "'Sign it,' he said sternly, 'or take the consequences.'

   "The King signed.

   "'Ned,' said the Baron de Bohun, as he removed his iron
vizor from his bronze face, 'thou hast this day saved
all England.'"

   In the stories of our boyhood in which Ned figured, there
was no such thing as a heroine, or practically none. At
best she was brought in as an afterthought. It was
announced on page three hundred and one that at the close
of Ned's desperate adventures in the West Indies he
married the beautiful daughter of Don Diego, the Spanish
governor of Portobello; or else, at the end of the great
war with Napoleon, that he married a beautiful and
accomplished French girl whose parents had perished in
the Revolution.

   Ned generally married away from home. In fact his marriages
were intended to cement the nations, torn asunder by
Ned's military career. But sometimes he returned to his
native town, all sunburned, scarred and bronzed from
battle (the bronzing effect of being in battle is always
noted): he had changed from a boy to a man: that is, from
a boy of fifteen to a man of sixteen. In such a case Ned
marries in his own home town. It is done after this
fashion:

 Prev. P 10/55 next