CHAPTER VI
A CITY FUNERAL
Thus we lived—humble folk if you please—far from the world of wealth or of fashion.
This happiness was too great to last. We were to be stricken down, yet not unto death.
The troubles began with the death of my father.
One morning, when he ought to have been at his desk, my old friend Ramage came to see me.
'Master Will,' he said, the tears running down his cheeks, 'Master Will—'tis now too late. You will never be reconciled now.'
'What has happened?' I asked. But his troubled face told me.
'My master fell down in a fit last night, coming home from the Company's feast. They carried him home and put him to bed. But in the night he died.'