ces that the
girls had given us long days before in the park at Windsor. These we
returned to them, and they laughed and kissed them and re-gave them
unto us.

Still have we both those tokens; and mine doth now lie before me as I
pen these words. I take it up and kiss it tenderly, and a tear drops
down upon it.

Place that small glove, my children, in my grave and on my
death-stilled heart when I am gone.

* * * * *

The King forgot not the service we had rendered him upon that misty
plain of Redmoor. A handsome wedding portion did he send to both the
girls, although they did not need it. And when, later in his reign, he
did acquire the habit of imposing heavy fines upon all of his subjects,
both Harleston and myself escaped "as though by magic," as said some of
our friends.

* * * * *

And now the tale is told, and all that for me remains to do is sit with
folded hands beside that dear grey head before the blazing fire, and
talk away the winter's day. And in the hot summer's evenings stroll,
with that same dear trusting hand upon mine arm, that for sixty years
hath been there, beneath the old oaks of dear Bradley House. And when
your dear cousins, Harleston, and your Uncle Frederick and Aunt
Mary--as ye do call them--come over to spend with us a quiet evening,
we all do sit upon the great lawn and talk the setting sun into his
rest.

And now but a word of the great Michael, which ye all do love so
dearly. Mayhap ye never have heard the reason why we do not call him
"Sir." It was at his own request that we did drop the distinction.

"Sure, yer honour," said he to me one day, "if ye playze, wouldst thou
moind if Oi axed thee to not call me 'Sor'?"

"But for why, my good friend?"

"Uh! sure sor it doesn't sound roight to moy ears, and maketh me to
fale a stranger to thee, sor. Playze, sor, give unto me back moy ould
name and Oi'll fale more loike moysilf."

That, my dears, is the reason why the great man who hath ever lived
with us, and carried ye all on his mighty shoulders, hath ever been
known unto ye all as plain, old, faithful Michael.

And so, like the harmonious voices of a choir, we five are singing the
last, sweet, trembling note. It is dying softly out; but with a
tender, holy peacefulness.

THE END

NOTE.--Sir Walter Bradley's chronicle differs, in some parts, from the
histories of the majority of the writers of his ti