d you and loved you, always heard you calling
me, as if from some sacred corner of a perfect world. Is it that
yesterday's dissipation--yes, I was drunk yesternight, drunk in a
new way. I was drunk with the thought of you, the longing for you.
I picked a big handful of roses, and in my mind gave them into your
hands. And I thought you smiled and said:

"Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter Paradise." So I
followed you to your home there in the Virginian country. It was a
dream, all except the roses, and those I laid in front of the box
where I keep your letters and a sketch I made of you when we were
young and glad--when I was young and glad. For I am an old man,
Sheila, in all that makes men old. My step is quick still, my eye
is sharp, and my brain beats fast, but my heart is ancient. I am an
ancient of days, without hope or pleasure, save what pleasure comes
in thinking of one whom I worship, yet must ever worship from afar.

I wonder why I seem to feel you very near to-day! Perhaps it's
because 'tis Christmas Day. I am not a religious man but Christmas
is a day of memories.

Is it because of the past in Ireland? Am I only--God, am I only to
be what I am for the rest of my days, a planter denied the pleasure
of home by his own acts! Am I only a helpless fragment of a world
of lost things?

I have no friends--but yes, I have. I have Michael Clones and
Captain Ivy, though he's far away-aye, he's a friend of friends, is
Captain Ivy. These naval folk have had so much of the world, have
got the bearings of so many seas, that they lose all littleness, and
form their own minds. They are not like the people who knew me in
Ireland--the governor here is one of them--and who believe the worst
of me. The governor--faugh, he was made for bigger and better
things! He is one of the best swordsmen in the world, and he is
out against me here as if I was a man of importance, and not a
commonplace planter on an obscure river. I have no social home
life, and yet I live in what is called a castle. A Jamaica castle
has none of the marks of antiquity, chivalry, and distinction which
castles that you and I know in the old land possess.

What is my castle like? Well, it is a squarish building, of
bungalow type, set on a hill. It has stories and an attic, with a
jutting dormer-window in the front of the roof; and above th