Half a thousand heavy rifles shook high; half a thousand deep voices roared thunderously through the stony street:
THE END
And now that of a truth the Red Beast is slain, as all men know, follow these mellow years through which our children move, watching the world like a great witch-flower unfold. Content, I sit with her I love, at dusk, tying my soft feather-flies just as I tied them for Sir William in the golden time. The trout have nothing changed, nor I, though kings already live as legends.
Bitter-sweet on porch and paling, woodbine and white-starred clematis, and the deep hum of bees; and in the sunlit garden poppies, red as the blood of martyrs. Then moonlight and my dear wife at the door.
Betty, she hath cradled our tot, Felicity, to croon some soft charm of Southern sorcery, whereby sleep settles like gray dusk-moths on tired lids.
But for the boy, William, it serves not, and he defies us with his wooden gun, declaiming that a man whose grandsire died with Wolfe will not be taken off to bed at such an hour. And so my sweetheart cradles him, unheeding my stern hint of rods a-pickle for the wilful; and, in the moonlight, joining my fish-rod, I hear her from the nursery, singing the song of blessed days departed, yet with each dawn renewed:
"For courts are full of flattery,
As hath too oft been tried;
The city full of wantonness,