ndon, where the river lay like a serpent,
bristling with masts; and beyond the river and the town to the forests
of Epping and Hainault; and beyond the forests to the hills, where the
waning day still lingered in a mist of frosty blue. At their back,
midway of the Queen's park, stood up the old square tower Mirefleur, and
on its top one yellow light like the flame of a gigantic candle. The day
seemed builded of memories strange and untrue.

A belated gull flapped by them heavily, and the red sun went down.
England was growing lonely. A great barge laden with straw came out of
the dusk, and was gone without a sound, its ghostly sail drawing in a
wind that the wherry sat too low to feel. Nick held his breath as the
barge went by: it was unreal, fantastical.

Then the river dropped between its banks, and the woods and the hills
were gone. The tide ran heavily against the shore, and the wake of the
wherry broke the floating stars into cold white streaks and zigzag
ripplings of raveled light that ran unsteadily after them. The craft at
anchor in the Pool had swung about upon the flow, and pointed down to
Greenwich. A hush had fallen upon the never-ending bustle of the town;
and the air was full of a gray, uncanny afterglow which seemed to come
up out of the water, for the sky was grown quite dark.

They were all wrapped in their boat-cloaks, tired and silent. Now and
then Nick dipped his fingers into the cold water over the gunwale.

This was the end of the glory.

He wished the boat would go a little faster. Yet when they came to the
landing he was sorry.

The man-at-arms who went with him to Master Carew's house was one of the
Earl of Arundel's men, in a stiff-wadded jacket of heron-blue, with the
earls colors richly worked upon its back and his badge upon the sleeves.
Prowlers gave way before him in the streets, for he was broad and tall
and mighty, and the fear of any man was not in the look of his eye.

As they came up the slow hill, Nick sighed, for the long-legged
man-at-arms walked fast. "What, there!" said he, and clapped Nick on the
shoulder with his bony hand; "art far spent, lad? Why, marry, get thee
upon my back. I'll jog thee home in the shake of a black sheep's tail."

So Nick rode home upon the back of the Earl of Arundel's man-at-arms;
and that, too, seemed a dream like all the rest.

When they came to Master Carew's house the street was dark, and Nick's
foot was asleep. He stamped it, tingling, upo