another minute, watching that angel of a woman. How her face worked
and how she kept it in!"

"Ah, well!" said Jack, "there goes a brave servant of the queen's cut
off before his work was a quarter done. Heigho! I must home now, and see
my old father, and then--"

"And then home with me," said Cary. "You and I never part again! We have
pulled in the same boat too long, Jack; and you must not go spending
your prize-money in riotous living. I must see after you, old Jack
ashore, or we shall have you treating half the town in taverns for a
week to come."

"Oh, Mr. Cary!" said Jack, scandalized.

"Come home with me, and we'll poison the parson, and my father shall
give you the rectory."

"Oh, Mr. Cary!" said Jack.

So the two went off to Clovelly together that very day.

And Amyas was sitting all alone. His mother had gone out for a few
minutes to speak to the seamen who had brought up Amyas's luggage, and
set them down to eat and drink; and Amyas sat in the old bay-window,
where he had sat when he was a little tiny boy, and read "King Arthur,"
and "Fox's Martyrs," and "The Cruelties of the Spaniards." He put out
his hand and felt for them; there they lay side by side, just as they
had lain twenty years before. The window was open; and a cool air
brought in as of old the scents of the four-season roses, and rosemary,
and autumn gilliflowers. And there was a dish of apples on the table: he
knew it by their smell; the very same old apples which he used to gather
when he was a boy. He put out his hand, and took them, and felt them
over, and played with them, just as if the twenty years had never been:
and as he fingered them, the whole of his past life rose up before him,
as in that strange dream which is said to flash across the imagination
of a drowning man; and he saw all the places which he had ever seen, and
heard all the words which had ever been spoken to him--till he came to
that fairy island on the Meta; and he heard the roar of the cataract
once more, and saw the green tops of the palm-trees sleeping in the
sunlight far above the spray, and stept amid the smooth palm-trunks
across the flower-fringed boulders, and leaped down to the gravel beach
beside the pool: and then again rose from the fern-grown rocks the
beautiful vision of Ayacanora--Where was she? He had not thought of her
till now. How he had wronged her! Let be; he had been punished, and the
account was squared. Perhaps she did not care for him any