Their most gentle dealing with me quite unmanned me, so that I easily was persuaded to lie at Ashtead that night, but on the morrow I thought it best to go.
Very dim and lonely was my library that night. My consuming grief was dead, drowned in their happiness and gentle usage of me. Yet it was very lonely. I tried to read, but each book I sought availed less to fasten my thoughts. So I sat musing on all that had befallen me those last months, and trying not to think how empty and sad my great chair looked without the sweet burden which, as it were, I had once seen nestling there.
That fancy grew dim as the months wore on, and I was ever at Ashtead as of old playing with little Fulke, or hunting with Harry, or talking over old times with Sergeant Culverin, who quickly settled down as Harry's right-hand on his estate, and so continued till his honest spirit passed away. But with Mrs. Waldyve I read no more then, nor till years after, when, through my thrice-blessed friendship with Signor Bruno, a deep-set faith came to comfort my ripening years and hers.
Indeed it was little I read at all, save in books of travel and cosmography. Study seemed a very poor and dry food to me at that time, the more so as there was no longer any one to urge me to it. Mr. Cartwright's strife was now nothing but a din of unmeaning words in my ears. Good Mr. Follet, my only other scholar friend, was dead, and his cherished 'Apology' still-born; for though he bequeathed the manuscript to me to set forth, I found its original obscurity and tangled learning (in so far as it was legible) so over-laid and involved and interlined with added matter from the four quarters of earthly and unearthly wisdom as to be past human understanding.
Each day then I saw more clearly that all was changed with me, and grew to know that thenceforth, till age should bring me peace and studious quiet, my content could only be found at Frank Drake's side, or in such great and stirring work as his.
And so it was, and not without good reward either, both in honour and riches. Yet there was nothing which my unworthy service earned of Her Majesty's grace and bounty that I valued higher than the loving welcome which was so plentifully bestowed on me at Ashtead each time I came home.
THE END