Now the tidings of my return and of my strange adventures among the nations of the Indies were noised abroad far and wide, and people came from miles round, ay, even from Norwich and Yarmouth, to see me and I was pressed to tell my tale till I grew weary of it.  Also a service of thanksgiving for my safe deliverance from many dangers by land and sea was held in the church of St. Mary’s here in Ditchingham, which service was no longer celebrated after the rites of the Romish faith, for while I had sojourned afar, the saints were fallen like the Aztec gods; the yoke of Rome had been broken from off the neck of England, and though all do not think with me, I for one rejoiced at it heartily who had seen enough of priestcraft and its cruelties.

When that ceremony was over and all people had gone to their homes, I came back again to the empty church from the Hall, where I abode a while as the guest of my sister and her husband, till Lily and I were wed.

And there in the quiet light of the June evening I knelt in the chancel upon the rushes that strewed the grave of my father and my mother, and sent my spirit up towards them in the place of their eternal rest, and to the God who guards them.  A great calm came upon me as I knelt thus, and I felt how mad had been that oath of mine that as a lad I had sworn to be avenged upon de Garcia, and I saw how as a tree from a seed, all my sorrows had grown from it.  But even then I could not do other than hate de Garcia, no, nor can I to this hour, and after all it was natural that I should desire vengeance on the murderer of my mother though the wreaking of it had best been left in another Hand.

Without the little chancel door I met Lily, who was lingering there knowing me to be within, and we spoke together.

‘Lily,’ I said, ’I would ask you something.  After all that has been, will you still take me for your husband, unworthy as I am?’

‘I promised so to do many a year ago, Thomas,’ she answered, speaking very low, and blushing like the wild rose that bloomed upon a grave beside her, ’and I have never changed my mind.  Indeed for many years I have looked upon you as my husband, though I thought you dead.’

‘Perhaps it is more than I deserve,’ I said.  ’But if it is to be, say when it shall be, for youth has left us and we have little time to lose.’

‘When you will, Thomas,’ she answered, placing her hand in mine.

Within a week from that evening we were wed.

And now my tale is done.  God who gave me so sad and troublous a youth and early manhood, has blessed me beyond measure in my middle age and eld.  All these events of which I have written at such length were done with many a day ago:  the hornbeam sapling that I set beneath these windows in the year when we were married is now a goodly tree of shade and still I live to look on it.  Here in the happy valley of the Waveney, save for my bitter memories and that longing for the dead which no time can so