ives behind his self-abnegation were in the
highest degree creditable to him. This I have been asked to say, and I
am glad to say it.

Among Freydon's papers was one which, for a time, greatly puzzled me.
Once I had learned precisely what this paper meant, it became for me
most deeply significant, knowing as I did that it must have been lying
where I found it, in a drawer of Freydon's work-table, while he wrote,
immediately before his last illness, the final sections of this work,
including its penultimate chapter; including, therefore, such passages
as these:

_Over and above all this I deliberately chose my 'way out,' and it is
good. I am assured the life of this my hermitage is one better suited
to the man I am to-day than any other life I could hope to lead
elsewhere.... And if I, my inner self, cannot find peace here, where
peace so clearly is, what should it profit me to go seeking it where
peace is not visible at all, and where all that is visible is turmoil,
hurry, and fret.... And, in short, _Je suis, je reste!_ ... England!
Of all the place names, the names of countries that the world has ever
known, was ever one so simply magic as this--England? ..._

This document was a certificate entitling Freydon to a passage to
England by an Orient line steamer. Upon inquiry at the offices of the
line in Sydney, I found that, twenty-eight days before his death, my
friend had booked and paid for a passage to London. At his request no
berth had been allotted, and no date fixed. But, by virtue of the
payment then made, he was assured of a passage home when he should
choose to claim it. To my mind this discovery was one of peculiar
interest, considered in the light of the concluding pages of that
record of Nicholas Freydon's thoughts and experiences which is
presented in this volume.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RECORD OF NICHOLAS FREYDON***

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