But when he goes the country side will lose a man of whom they will not see the like again, for the breed is dead or dying; a man whose very prejudices, inconsistencies, and occasional wrong-headed violence will be held, when he is no longer here, to have been endearing qualities. And for manliness, for downright English God-fearing virtues, for love of Queen, country, family and home, they may search in vain to find his equal among the cosmopolitan Englishmen of the dawning twentieth century. His faults were many, and at one time he went near to sacrificing his daughter to save his house, but he would not have been the man he was without them.
And so to him, too, farewell. Perchance he will find himself better placed in the Valhalla of his forefathers, surrounded by those stout old de la Molles whose memory he regarded with so much affection, than here in this thin-blooded Victorian era. For as has been said elsewhere the old Squire would undoubtedly have looked better in a chain shirt and bearing a battle axe than ever he did in a frock coat, especially with his retainer George armed to the teeth behind him.
They kissed, and it was done.
Out from the church tower in the meadows broke with clash and clangour a glad sound of Christmas bells. Out it swept over layer, pitle and fallow, over river, olland, grove and wood. It floated down the valley of the Ell, it beat against Dead Man’s Mount (henceforth to the vulgar mind more haunted than ever), it echoed up the Castle’s Norman towers and down the oak-clad vestibule. Away over the common went the glad message of Earth’s Saviour, away high into the air, startling the rooks upon their airy courses, as though the iron notes of the World’s rejoicing would fain float to the throned feet of the World’s Everlasting King.
Peace and goodwill! Ay and happiness to the children of men while their span is, and hope for the Beyond, and heaven’s blessing on holy love and all good things that are. This is what those liquid notes seemed to say to the most happy pair who stood hand in hand in the vestibule and thought on all they had escaped and all that they had won.
“Well, Quaritch, if you and Ida have quite done staring at each other, which isn’t very interesting to a third party, perhaps you will not mind telling us how you happened on old Sir James de la Molle’s hoard.”
Thus adjured, Harold began his thrilling story, telling the whole history of the night in detail, and if his hearers had expected to be astonished certainly their expectations were considerably more than fulfilled.
“Upon my word,” said the Squire when he had done, “I think I am beginning to grow superstitious in my old age. Hang me if I don’t believe it was the finger of Providence itself that pointed out those letters to you. Anyway, I’m off to see the spoil. Run and get your hat, Ida, my dear, and we will all go together.”