ome Mighty Silly Business 324

XIX. A Night on the Road 345

XX. The Vicar's Proposition 362

XXI. The Strange Conjuncture of Two Gentlemen 378

XXII. The Device of Lord Carford 396

XXIII. A Pleasant Penitence 414

XXIV. A Comedy before the King 434

XXV. The Mind of M. de Fontelles 451

XXVI. I come Home 468

SIMON DALE

CHAPTER I

THE CHILD OF PROPHECY

One who was in his day a person of great place and consideration, and
has left a name which future generations shall surely repeat so long as
the world may last, found no better rule for a man's life than that he
should incline his mind to move in Charity, rest in Providence, and turn
upon the poles of Truth. This condition, says he, is Heaven upon Earth;
and although what touches truth may better befit the philosopher who
uttered it than the vulgar and unlearned, for whom perhaps it is a
counsel too high and therefore dangerous, what comes before should
surely be graven by each of us on the walls of our hearts. For any man
who lived in the days that I have seen must have found much need of
trust in Providence, and by no whit the less of charity for men. In such
trust and charity I have striven to write: in the like I pray you to
read.

I, Simon Dale, was born on the seventh day of the seventh month in the
year of Our Lord sixteen-hundred-and-forty-seven. The date was good in
that the Divine Number was thrice found in it, but evil in that it fell
on a time of sore trouble both for the nation and for our own house;
when men had begun to go about saying that if the King would not keep
his promises it was likely that he would keep his head as little; when
they who had fought for freedom were suspecting that victory had brought
new tyrants; when the Vicar was put out of his cure; and my father,
having trusted the King first, the Parliament afterwards, and at last
neither the one nor the other, had lost the greater part of his
substance, and fallen from wealth to straitened means: such is the
common reward of an honest patriotism wedded to an open mind. However,
the date, good or bad, was none of my doing, nor indeed, folks
whispered, much of my parents'