“Thank me no thanks, my Hollander,” said he, when once more I blessed him for the service he had done. “The poet’s glory cometh not from earth. I have, while I waited here, written an excellent and notable epic on the wars of the illustrious house of the McDonnells, the which I will even now rehearse thee for thy delectation. And when once more thou art returned to thy press, I reserve for thee the glory of imprinting three noble copies of the same on paper of vellum, to be bound after the manner of the Venetians, in white, with clasps of gold, to be given, one to my lord Sorley Boy, one to Sir Ludar, and one to thee, for thy private and particular delectation.”
Again I thanked him, and begged he would reserve the reading till to-morrow, when I should be more wakeful.
To which, marvelling much at my patience, he agreed.
“As for me,” said he, “naught falleth ill to the favourites of the Immortals. I owe no grudge to the day I took thee into my protection. As a printer, count on me as thy patron. As a man, call me thy friend. And if some day, at thy frugal fireside (for the which thou art already provided with the chiefest ornament), thou shouldst have a spare chair and platter, I will even deign to fill the one and empty the other now and again, in memory of this, our time of fellowship. Therefore count on me, my Hollander; and so, good-night.”
There is little more to be told. Of the crew of the doomed Gerona, the tide washed some hundreds, before many weeks were past, into a bay near the Causeway Headlands, east of Dunluce. Amongst them, Ludar and I discovered the body of Don Alonzo, calm and gentle in death, and buried him with what honour, we could in holy ground near the tomb of the McDonnells. A few cannon and guns we helped haul up and set on the walls of Dunluce, where they are to this day, much to the wrath of my Lord Deputy and his English Councillors.
Jack Gedge remains body servant to Sir Ludar McDonnell; where, if his trust be not so great as it was (now that his master and mistress are one), he is none the less faithful or joyous in his service.
As for the poet, he was true to his promise of visiting Jeannette and me at our frugal fireside. But this was not for many years after the promise was given.
As soon as my arm was healed and I could persuade Ludar to release me, I returned to London, to find the house without Temple Bar still empty, and Master Walgrave’s name still a caution to evil-doers. Despairing of seeing me and his type from Rochelle, he had sold himself to those firebrands Masters Udal and Penry; and by means of his secret press had given utterance to certain scandalous and seditious libels on the bishops and clergy of the Church, known by the name of Marprelate, his books. A merry chase he gave the beadle and pursuivants all over the country, dropping libels wherever he went, till at last he suddenly vanished and left them to whistle.
For Jeannette’s sake as well as my own I wandered far for news of him, and heard of him at last from Mistress Crane as having fled to Rochelle with all his family. Thither I wrote him of my welfare, and had a letter back bidding me, if I was still minded to serve him, meet him in Edinburgh. Thither, then, I took sail, and presently found him; and should you meet with any books imprinted by Robert Walgrave, Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty in Edinburgh, know that the hand that set them in type was the same which now writes this true history.
In due season Mistress Walgrave and the little ones came northward too; and one glad day I wandered to the western coast, and there met Ludar and his fair bride, and with them my own sweet Jeannette, from whom I never parted more.