ry prejudices, inconsistencies, and occasional wrong-headed violence
will be held, when he is no longer here, to have been endearing
qualities. And for manliness, for downright English God-fearing
virtues, for love of Queen, country, family and home, they may search
in vain to find his equal among the cosmopolitan Englishmen of the
dawning twentieth century. His faults were many, and at one time he
went near to sacrificing his daughter to save his house, but he would
not have been the man he was without them.

And so to him, too, farewell. Perchance he will find himself better
placed in the Valhalla of his forefathers, surrounded by those stout
old de la Molles whose memory he regarded with so much affection, than
here in this thin-blooded Victorian era. For as has been said
elsewhere the old Squire would undoubtedly have looked better in a
chain shirt and bearing a battle axe than ever he did in a frock coat,
especially with his retainer George armed to the teeth behind him.

* * * * *

They kissed, and it was done.

Out from the church tower in the meadows broke with clash and clangour
a glad sound of Christmas bells. Out it swept over layer, pitle and
fallow, over river, plantain, grove and wood. It floated down the
valley of the Ell, it beat against Dead Man's Mount (henceforth to the
vulgar mind more haunted than ever), it echoed up the Castle's Norman
towers and down the oak-clad vestibule. Away over the common went the
glad message of Earth's Saviour, away high into the air, startling the
rooks upon their airy courses, as though the iron notes of the World's
rejoicing would fain float to the throned feet of the World's
Everlasting King.

Peace and goodwill! Ay and happiness to the children of men while
their span is, and hope for the Beyond, and heaven's blessing on holy
love and all good things that are. This is what those liquid notes
seemed to say to the most happy pair who stood hand in hand in the
vestibule and thought on all they had escaped and all that they had
won.

* * * * *

"Well, Quaritch, if you and Ida have quite done staring at each other,
which isn't very interesting to a third party, perhaps you will not
mind telling us how you happened on old Sir James de la Molle's
hoard."

Thus adjured, Harold began his thrilling story, telling the whole
history of the night in detail, and if his hearers had expected