It was in the winter time that the Squire lay ill at the “Arms,” and Christmas was coming.
As it came nearer, the Squire grew weaker and weaker, and everybody saw he was going home. One evening the landlady went up to the Squire’s rooms, and found him out of bed with his dressing-gown on, sitting in a chair and looking out of the window. It was a bright, frosty evening and the moon was up, and you could see a long way off.
She went in on tiptoe, fancying he might be asleep, and not wanting to wake him, and she saw he was looking out over the fields right away to the old Hall. It stood out in the moonlight far away, looking very haunted and gloomy, as it often does now when I look at it from that very window.
The tears were running down the old man’s face, and he was quite sobbing, and the landlady heard him say to himself, “The dear old place! Ah! if I could only have died there I could have died happy.”
Mr. Owen used to come every day to ask after the Squire, and the landlady told him about this, and he set about thinking if something couldn’t be managed. He knew the Squire wouldn’t take charity or be beholden to anybody, or accept a favour; and the thing was—how could he be got back to the Hall believing it was his own?
Mr. Owen told his wife—the Squire’s daughter—and they both put their heads together, as the saying is. Miss Di, as she was always called about here, suddenly had an idea, and Mr. Owen went to London that night.
The next day the Squire was told that an old friend wanted to see him, and when he was told it was a friend of the old wild days he said, “Let him come—let him come.”
The friend was Colonel Rackstraw—that was the name, I think—a great gambler, like the Squire—and it was to him the Squire had lost the Hall.
It was quite a meeting, those two old fellows seeing each other again, they say, and they began to talk about old times and the adventures they had had, and the Squire got quite chirrupy, and chuckled at things they remembered.
“Ah, Rackstraw,” says the Squire presently, “I never had your luck; you were always a lucky dog, and you broke me at last. I didn’t mind anything but the old place—that settled me.”