He heard also, amid the glorious rumble, of another royal progress made by the Queen. It was at her Highland home, the spectators the eternal hills which lie about it. For caparisoning there was a donkey-chaise, and for escort a Highlander, carrying the shawls. The Queen was bound for the manse, across the fields by the river-side, to pray with the minister's wife that he, being ill, might be made whole.
That was the royal progress Sir George Grey would best have liked to see, because it held the key to the other. From it, he sent, by his friend the Prime Minister of New Zealand, a last message to Greater Britain. 'Give the people of New Zealand my love,' it ran, 'and may God have you in His keeping? It was the closing of the book, save for the blank pages which occur at the end.
'It's all light,' was Selwyn's dying exclamation in Maori. None knew the Maori words that Sir George Grey murmured, and none doubted what they were. To us, the island race of two worlds,
Under the Cross of Gold,
That shines over city and river,
There he shall rest for ever,
Among the wise and the bold.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Romance of a Pro-Consul, by James Milne