may be taken for granted that I was about as
satisfied with my lot in life as a man could well be. Pannonia seemed
slipping every day further into the background, and there were even
times when I was scarcely conscious of her existence. Strangely enough,
my mother, upon whom time was steadily laying her hand, seemed to be
abandoning the notion that we should return, and to be resigning herself
to the idea that England was likely to be her home for the remainder of
her existence. And that leads me to venture upon a little piece of
moralising, the first and last, I trust, I shall indulge in.

We are led to believe by the doctors that once in every seven years our
physical being undergoes a change. Might this not be so in other
matters? Be that as it may, there is certainly a strange concurrence in
numbers. I was eight years old when the gipsy woman told me my fortune,
and brought about the first trouble between Max and myself; I was
sixteen when von Marquart made his appearance in England, and marked
another epoch in my life; and if the line of coincidence may be followed
further, I might also observe that I was twenty-four when the third,
and, perhaps in a certain sense, the most important event occurred, for
the reason that from it so many other issues were developed. At the same
time I must confess it is not a subject upon which I care to dwell for
any length of time. It has both a pleasant and painful side, and while I
am willing to state that it has proved my greatest blessing, I am also
bound to admit that it has inflicted upon me a wound, the scar of which
time will never be able to obliterate. And this brings me to another
argument. Surely it must have struck you how often the greatest events
find their origin in the simplest things. I will supply an instance.
John Noakes, a village mechanic, drops in one Sunday afternoon, having
nothing better to do, to take a cup of tea with Matthew Stoakes, whose
daughter Jane, by the way, boasts a pretty face and a comely figure.
Hitherto, John has never thought of sweethearting, or indeed of anything
else but his carpenter's bench, and his bit of garden behind the
cottage. Somehow this afternoon, however, he feels impelled towards his
neighbour's house. He goes; old Matthew, to while away the time, reads
to the assembled company a letter he has received from a brother in
Australia. Though the writer himself would not appear to have done as
well as he could have wished, he des