f all these good peasant folk, who loved his name.

Yet the thought of those days when he was plain Richard Arden, son of
Sir Richard Arden, living in the beautiful house at Deptford, fretted at
all his joy in his present state. That, and the thought of all he owed
to him who had been Lord of Arden until he came, with his lame foot and
his heirship, fretted his soul as rust frets steel. These people had
received him, loved him, been kind to him when he was only a tramp boy.
And he was repaying them by taking away from them priceless possessions.
For so he esteemed the lordship of Arden and the old lands and the old
Castle.

Suppose he gave them up--the priceless possessions? Suppose he went away
to that sure retreat that was still left him--the past? It was a
sacrifice. To give up the here and now, for the far off, the almost
forgotten. All that happy other life, that had once held all for which
he cared, seemed thin and dream-like beside the vivid glories of the
life here, now. Yet he remembered how once that life, in King James's
time, had seemed the best thing in the world, and how he had chosen to
come back from it, to help a helpless middle-aged ne'er-do-weel of a
tramp--Beale. Well, he had helped Beale. He had done what he set out to
do. For Beale's sake he had given up the beautiful life for the sordid
life. And Beale was a new man, a man that Dickie had made. Surely now he
could give up one beautiful life for another--for the sake of these, his
flesh and blood, who had so readily, so kindly, so generously set him in
the place that had been theirs?

More and more it came home to Dickie that this was what he had to do. To
go back to the times when James the First was King, and never to return
to these times at all. It would be very bitter--it would be like leaving
home never to return. It was exile. Well, was Richard Lord Arden to be
afraid of exile--or of anything else? He must not just disappear either,
or they would search and search for him, and never know that he was
gone forever. He must slip away, and let the father of Edred and Elfrida
be, as he had been, Lord Arden. He must make it appear that he, Richard
Lord Arden, was dead. He thought over this very carefully. But if he
seemed to be dead, Edred and Elfrida would be very unhappy. Well, they
should not be unhappy. He would tell them. And then they would know that
he had behaved well, and as an Arden should. Don't be hard on him for
longing for just thi