But there is a cloud on Charles Ravenshoe's face, even now. I saw him last summer lying on the sand, and playing with his eldest boy. And the cloud was on him then. There was no moroseness, no hardness in the expression; but the face was not the merry old face I knew so well at Shrewsbury and Oxford. There is a dull, settled, dreaming melancholy there still. The memory of those few terrible months has cast its shadow upon him. And the shadow will lie, I fancy, upon that forehead, and will dim those eyes, until the forehead is smoothed in the sleep of death, and the eyes have opened to look upon eternity.
Good-bye.
WARD, LOCK AND BOWDEN, LTD., LONDON, NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The best banisters for sliding down are broad oak ones, with a rib in the middle. This new narrow sort, which is coming in, are wretched.
[2] The short description of the University boat-race which begins this chapter was written two years ago, from the author's recollections of the race of 1852. It would do for a description of this year's race, quite as well as of any other year, substituting "Cambridge" for "Oxford," according to the year.
[3] I mean C. M.
[4] A fact with regard to one tribe, to the author's frequent confusion. Any number above two, whether of horses, cattle, or sheep, was always represented as being eighty-four. Invariably, too, with an adjective introduced after the word "four," which we don't use in a drawing-room.
[5] Once for all, let me call every honest reader to witness, that, unless I speak in the first person, I am not bound to the opinions of any one of the characters in this book. I have merely made people speak, I think, as they would have spoken. Even in a story, consisting so entirely of incident as this, I feel it necessary to say so much, for no kind of unfairness is so common as that of identifying the opinions of a story-teller with those of his dramatis personæ.