ful
hospitality, rambles with him in lanes and meadows, long talks amid the
stillness of the rural night. We hoped it would all last for many a
year; it seemed, indeed, as though Ryecroft had only need of rest and
calm to become a hale man. But already, though he did not know it, he
was suffering from a disease of the heart, which cut short his life after
little more than a lustrum of quiet contentment. It had always been his
wish to die suddenly; he dreaded the thought of illness, chiefly because
of the trouble it gave to others. On a summer evening, after a long walk
in very hot weather, he lay down upon the sofa in his study, and there--as
his calm face declared--passed from slumber into the great silence.

When he left London, Ryecroft bade farewell to authorship. He told me
that he hoped never to write another line for publication. But, among
the papers which I looked through after his death, I came upon three
manuscript books which at first glance seemed to be a diary; a date on
the opening page of one of them showed that it had been begun not very
long after the writer's settling in Devon. When I had read a little in
these pages, I saw that they were no mere record of day-to-day life;
evidently finding himself unable to forego altogether the use of the pen,
the veteran had set down, as humour bade him, a thought, a reminiscence,
a bit of reverie, a description of his state of mind, and so on, dating
such passage merely with the month in which it was written. Sitting in
the room where I had often been his companion, I turned page after page,
and at moments it was as though my friend's voice sounded to me once
more. I saw his worn visage, grave or smiling; recalled his familiar
pose or gesture. But in this written gossip he revealed himself more
intimately than in our conversation of the days gone by. Ryecroft had
never erred by lack of reticence; as was natural in a sensitive man who
had suffered much, he inclined to gentle acquiescence, shrank from
argument, from self-assertion. Here he spoke to me without restraint,
and, when I had read it all through, I knew the man better than before.

Assuredly, this writing was not intended for the public, and yet, in many
a passage, I seemed to perceive the literary purpose--something more than
the turn of phrase, and so on, which results from long habit of
composition. Certain of his reminiscences, in particular, Ryecroft could
hardly have troubled to write do