g the navy of that wonderful man Peter the Great,
and after serving with much credit for a few years, he returned to
England.

Captain Deane had during this time found a number of friends, and by
their means he was soon afterwards appointed English consul at Ostend,
where he lived with his wife Elizabeth till they were both advanced in
life. As an elderly couple they came back to Nottingham once more, and
went to live in the sweet village of Wilford, on the opposite side of
the silvery Trent. It was the peaceful green retreat that had beckoned
him back to England from many a scene of foreign grandeur, and smiled
across many a time of tumult and of battle. He and his wife both loved
the Dutch home where they had so long lived, and when he built a house
for himself in a thorough English village, he constructed it in the
Dutch style, which indeed in his early youth had been the very height of
fashion. Next to his own, behind the same trim garden and row of
silvery poplars, he built one also for his sister Polly, who was then a
widow. Alethea, after the death of her husband, had returned to Harwood
Grange with her children, and devoted herself to them, endeavouring so
to bring them up that they might love and serve God. She by this time
had also gone to her rest; so also had most of those who have been
mentioned in the previous history. Mistress Pearson did not live long
after her return to England, and she was saved the misery of hearing the
tragical death of her husband, who, with all his faults, had at all
events loved her. In a desperate action with a Queen's ship, he with
all his crew had been blown up, shortly after Deane had encountered him
at the mouth of the Delaware.

The tomb of John Deane, Captain RN, and of Elizabeth his wife, is to be
seen on a little green promontory above the sparkling Trent and near the
chancel of the parish church, where sweet strains of music, accompanying
the sound of human voices and the murmurs of the river, are wont to
mingle in harmonious hymns of prayer and praise. A more fitting spot in
which to await in readiness for the last hour of life than Wilford can
scarcely be imagined, nor a sweeter place than its church-yard in which
the mortal may lie down to rest from toil till summoned by the last
trump to rise and put on immortality.

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's John Deane of Nottingham, by W.H.G. Kingston

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN